Video game collectors frequently wind up with loose discs or cartridges, and it’s sometimes nice to have the manual and packaging so it fits in with the rest of the collection. It’s the same reason why someone would go after a “DVD Backer Card”. What else is one supposed to do with a loose disc?
I suppose the dark side is that such packaging can easily be combined with a bootleg cart or fake disc, but I try not to think about that.
And yes, the margins can be pretty tiny, except maybe when it comes to slightly less common items. There is a small degree of satisfaction in knowing that someone else’s loose disc has been provided with a home, but that doesn’t count for much. That’s probably why I haven’t been in a hurry to sell off some of the other packaging I’ve somehow accumulated, considering the headaches that can be involved; besides, newer stuff is much easier to find in excellent shrinkwrapped condition anyway. I suppose in the end I’ll probably try to sell off the whole lot in bulk.
I sure couldn’t produce anything as nice as your typical offset-printed backer card on any printer I’ve ever owned. And if I went down to the local copy shop, I’d probably end up paying almost as much as I would have for the genuine eBay article.
I will never understand why everyone doesn’t just do what I do. As soon as a material possession ceases to have practical or sentimental value to me, I sell or donate it.
Perhaps it’s because my grandfather kept everything he ever was given or procured, and I vowed at a very young age never to do that. I mean the man installed large sliding doors from his backyard into his basement so he could store a small airplane down there!
Yes, Ok. But it’s for a DVD of a movie. Who cares?
Having said that my house mostly has cheap stuff in it that was given to us by others, and my nesting instinct is nonexistent. I recognize that for some people this matters, but honestly, at this level of granular detail I just don’t get it.
I think lots of people do that (I do). But we collectively produce so much… I dunno. [quote=“GulliverFoyle, post:27, topic:83669”]
Perhaps it’s because my grandfather kept everything he ever was given or procured
[/quote]
Did your grandfather grow up during the depression? That might explain that.
He was born right as America was emerging from the Great Depression. His father, my paternal grandfather, did grow up during the Great Depression and fought in WWII as a young man. I only met my great grandfather a few times as a young kid, but he had an impressive force of personality…not a bully, just that he had a gravitas even a kid couldn’t ignore. Now that you mention it, that might be where my grandfather gets his need to hang onto things.
Don’t get me wrong, my granddad is an amazing person who’s led a very full life (he was a pilot and medic in the Korean War, he campaigned for Eisenhower, and he’s one of the engineers who helped design the US national highway system), and I’m keenly aware I won’t have him around forever, but he is a bit of a pack-rat, albeit a pretty clean and organized one.
I do think that we have a hard time moving out of the context we were born into and grew up into. It seems to me we always bear the marks of our childhood and youth. I think that an event like the depression (and the world wars) probably had a major impact on the people who experienced them.
