Had my 2 year annv. with the girlfriend last weekend. I've been told I have 100 bucks to blow on SR books. I'm also likely to start running SR soon.

I currently have in print

runners companion
Unwired
Runners Black Book.

on PDF
Arsenal
20th edition.
street magic

What should I get? I pretty much want actual product in hand, as opposed to the pdf monstrosity.

Im leaning towards picking up runners toolkit so far. Which still leaves me with some cash to spend.

Augmentation perhaps?
At our table, the three most commonly referenced books are Arsenal (contains so much gear and combat rules), SR4A (core rules of course) and Augmentation (mostly because we like blowing limbs off people).
We have Runner's Toolkit but haven't found it useful yet. The tables have too many wrong entries to be helpful (was this corrected with the print version?) and we use the Karma gen (corrected version so yeah, stats cost 5x) rather than BP gen to make characters since it tends to make more rounded characters than BP does so other than gear PACKS, there isn't much we could use. YMMV.
If you want a hardcover, I'd get the SR4A.

Same here. Close 4th place is Street Magic.

I strongly recommend the core book. It is something you can't have enough physical copies of. Each person at a table could bring 3 print copies and a tablet and you would still somehow not have enough to go around.

After that Arsenal and Augmentation are virtually must haves. See if you can find a used bookstore or website and get all 3 for your hundred bucks.

If that aint solid truth I dont know what is. and odly enough, the one person in my group that doesnt own a print copy is the friggin rules lawyer! (If he werent such a good friend and didnt know when to back off i wouldnt even let him play!)

I really like the box set that just came out last year. you can get around not having it for sure, but for learning how to to play reading the story/rule book that they threw in there is worth hours reading SR20A.

My suggestions -

Get a copy of the SR4A hardcopy. Seriously, as many copies of this book around the table is a good thing.

Then

Augmentation
Sprawl States

Then pick and choose as needed -


Shadows of North America
Shadows of Europe
Shadows of Asia
Running Wild
Threats 1 & 2
State of the Art: 2063 + 2064
Dragons of the Sixth World
Shadowbeat

Yep, there's some old stuff there, but so much of it useful and fluff can always be updated

Be nice If you could buy a box that came with the core rulebook divided into paperback sections.

SR4A Hardcover, Runner's Toolkit (The Box Set everyone's talking about), and a few Shadowrun Missions from the current season for adventure ideas.

Oh, and later, if the group uses the Advanced Lifestyle Rules from Runner's Companion, get the E-Book Safehouses.

Yes, I hear the author did a great job

Guy's a hack, but it's a subject that should have been written up long ago.

Folks were suggesting that the tables and what not from the box set were grossly incorrect. Is that the case in the print edition? (Including the first run.)

Augumentation can be found pretty cheaply in print, same goes for Street Magic-I'd also throw out as fun back drop material the Sixth World Almanac-some people were pretty critical of this, but I actually enjoyed it greatly; and the Seattle 2072 is an okay investment if you're running a game in Seattle.

Since you're potentially GMing SR, I'd suggest you spend a little more and get both the Toolkit and SR4A. The Toolkit is a great little starter kit both for new GMs and players and you'd be hard pressed to find a more beautiful/useful BBB than SR4A.

And the GM Screen in Toolkit will protect you from any dice thrown at you, and possibly some small caliber rounds!

Am I the only one who thinks a campaign book like Ghost Cartels or the more recent Corporate Intrigue might be a good buy? Lots of plot hooks in there.

Both Awesome Purchases, from what I have heard.

I wish the mission writeups were more detailed in Ghost Cartels; it's written as a campaign, but it really just describes a bunch of events and leaves it to you to write Shadowruns out of those events. Corporate Intrigue isn't much more detailed, but it does contain a wider variety of ideas, as opposed to having everything center around a single drug.

If you're into metaplot and/or shadowtalk stuff, though, Ghost Cartels is definitely worth a read though.

I don't like running someone else's adventures, preferring instead to craft my own. That said from an objective stand point both have their value if that's your sort of thing. I own them, but use them for background material instead of as a campaign.