SNAP Review – Another Man’s Treasure

Everyone knows the old saying. One man’s trash….

Is another man’s treasure.

Yes, but this is 2025 – So maybe the ladies want in on the second-hand action?

This one is for the whole family, when you’re trading heirlooms back and forth in Another Man’s Treasure. And that’s our SNAP review for today.

Game

Another Man’s Treasure is a hand management, set collection game for 2-6 players published by Grandpa Beck’s Games. The box says family members as young as seven can play, and a game should last about a half hour.

Art

Just like any possible hand-me-down you can think of, Another Man’s Treasure‘s art starts with the plaid. All of the cards have a wonderful 80’s style orange plaid, and I’ve got to say, without infringing on some IP, they’ve done a pretty good job with some of these illustrations. And these items, let’s face it, we’ve seen our parents and aunts and uncles try to foist these things on unwilling participants.

And grandparents. Yeah, all of them.

I love how some of them even relate to each other. For example, here’s the pool table. The text is a quote from Mona who says: “This was not what I had in mind when Paul asked if I wanted to host pool parties”.

And then you’ve got this cute flower. Paul writes “I bought this for Mona to apologize for the pool table” and below that Mona replies, “It didn’t work”.

So there’s a lot of cute, tongue-in-cheek graphic design in this game, even if it’s not the kind of game that gives you fantastical landscapes or imaginary creatures.

I mean, look at the cover of this rulebook!

Mechanics

But how do you play this game?

Every player starts with eight cards in their hand and one of these score sheets. The score sheet has five classic game patterns listed on it:

• Two sets of four
• Two suited runs of four
• One suited run of four and one set of four
• One suited run of eight
• and Four suited pairs

Each round, players are going to want to try to get one of these sets of eight cards into their hand.

Play starts to the left of the dealer and basic play is simple – draw a card, either from the deck or the top of the discard pile, play a complete set if you can, and then discard a card.

When a player discards a card, anyone at the table can say “Can I have that?”. At this point, the player who is about to have their turn can say they want it, and take the discarded card for free. But if they pass, it goes around the table clockwise until it gets to the player who asked for it. Each person along the way has the chance to take that top card from the discard pile instead. But if they do, they also take a card from the top of the deck.

In addition to trying to play a set of eight cards that matches a game pattern, players can also play cards off patterns they or another player had played previously.

Once someone runs out of cards, after discarding their final card, the round immediately ends. Everyone else can put down a partial game pattern – if they’re able to, and score the rest of the cards in their hand. Basic treasures score five points, and wilds score either ten or fifteen.

If a player played an eight card pattern OR a partial pattern because someone went out (and there are rules for these in the rulebook) they must cross out the pattern they used from their score sheet and they can never use it again in this game.

Points are bad in this game! You want the lowest score you can.

After this, the dealer moves to the player to the left and you go again. The basic game has five rounds.

There’s also a progressive play variant on the backs of the scorecards, but we’ll leave you to find out about that for yourself.

Whoever has the lowest total score wins!

Expectations

So, we come into most Grandpa Beck’s games with some expectations, I think, and I’ll start.

First, their games are usually based in some way on standard card games, especially if the game is a box of cards. (Like this one!) This particular game relies on tried-and-true mechanics like hand management and set collection. So, in this way, I expected Another Man’s Treasure to feel very familiar. It did. I also expected that woven into those familiar mechanics would be those moments when the whole table erupts – just like we see in Skull King, which is another Grandpa Beck’s title.

I thought, from reading about it, that this game would be a bit like Rummy. But once I dug into the rules, it didn’t quite line up with that idea. So I struggled for a while to understand what was going on here. And that leads to our surprises…

Surprises

Yeah. So, the game does have twists and turns. Because of the fact that you’re playing sets of cards in order to NOT score those cards, it actually takes a couple of rounds to wrap your brain around that idea.

I really loved the idea that you’re gradually reducing your own flexibility over the course of five rounds. YOU choose the sets to eliminate. YOU choose whether or not to compile a huge hand of cards. YOU choose the times when it’s not worth it to score something partially because that game pattern might be too valuable to go halfsies on and only get partial benefits from it.

Yeah, trying to make a set of eight cards with only eight cards in your hand was a real struggle for me. Saying “Can I have that?” and taking more cards, gives you flexibility to work on more than one kind of set. But then it leaves you with extra cards to play even if you DO make that eight card set work.

There ended up being a lot more to the decisions in this game than I expected. Sometimes it’s worth it to be able to get MOST of the cards out of your hand and still score a few points at the end of the round.

Recommended?

Another Man’s Treasure is a great option for a game to take out if your family only plays games with regular playing cards and you just want to mix it up. And if you’re playing with multiple generations, I suspect you’ll run into more than a few situations when you throw down grandma’s canner and you have your own story to tell about your own family’s weird kitchen gadgets.

We’re going to rate Another Man’s Treasure 3 ½ Treasures out of 5.

And that’s Another Man’s Treasure, in a SNAP!

Find it at your local game store, buy direct from Grandpa Beck’s, or get it on Amazon.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Another Man’s Treasure from Grandpa Beck’s Games for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?