Why are NES carts always so dirty?

[Emperor Megas]

I always kept boxes and manuals... not because I ever thought they'd have "value". Conversely, why would you throw out something that you or your parents just paid money for? Something that explained how to play the game if you got stuck, and featured cool cover art in many cases? Am I alone/insane on this one?

Same here.

Not that I disagree, but did you really keep every bit of packaging of everything your parents or yourself bought?

Yeah, pretty much. I don't know if he did, but I always kept everything. Now, I wasn't the best when I was young at storing it all, or keeping it in pristine condition, but I usually held onto everything. I think it started with The Transformers' boxes. They were just so damn cool to me. I felt like I had "more" toy by having the boxes. They had these cool invisible stat graphs that you could use a clear red piece of celluloid to view. There was no way I was throwing that out.

Go figure that less than 10 years later I would even try to preserve the plastic wrap on boxed games by using a knife to cut it open at the flap, leaving the rest of the plastic intact.

I do that as well.