I'm pretty much the same as far as buying sticker-covered games. All the titles in my first post were either $1 or $2.50. For games that cheap, I totally don't care.
Something that is actually semi-valuable (when not all crudded up) needs to be relatively clean for me to be interested. If I end up tearing a label on a $1 game, then oh well. No big loss. I'm not trying to risk that for a copy of EVO or something unless it's like 10 bucks.
Call me crazy but I actually enjoy cleaning old Nes, Snes, N64 and Genesis carts. And by "enjoy" I mean that I find it relaxing to take a new pile of carts with me into the bathroom and clean them one by one. Usually rubbing alcohol and q-tips does the trick but sometimes I have to break out my goo-be-gone for certain marks that alcohol just can't penetrate. And I'm like this for carts regardless of if I plan to keep them for myself or sell them. But I agree with everyone who said that they will always clean a cart before they let it enter their system. Thats very smart advice.
ALL HAIL THE 1 2 P
Originally Posted by THE 1 2 P
It's a really smart idea to clean the games first too.
Cleaning games = easy as pie.
Cleaning a console = a lot tougher to do as thoroughly as the games.
I clean the living hell out of both the interior and exterior of my cartridges. While it is time consuming, it oh so satisfying in an obsessive compulsive sort of way.
Im glad I can say Ive never encountered a corroded cartridge before....
If it's not brand-new, in the box, I immediately clean the game BEFORE letting it anywhere NEAR my console.
Good thing, too -- got my "clean" Donkey Kong Land cart last Friday, and the pins were FILTHY. Took 15 minutes of scrubbing at them with a Q-Tip soaked in 70% alcohol, and there was STILL corrosion on a few pins. Finally remembered the pencil-eraser trick.
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Another advantage to taking screws out of cartridges and cleaning inside:
I have come across a few NES and SNES games over the years that had a noticeable rattle to them. Upon opening the cartridge shell, I found the plastic board retainer broken off on one side. All I can guess is that the previous owner had a console with dirty pins/blinking screen problem and figured that the games needed to be shoved in hard to make them work. The broken off board retainer piece actually allows the game's PCB to float in and out of the cartridge on that side if not repaired. Opening up the rattling game cases allowed me to superglue the broken off retainer back in place, fixing the problem.
It's more about microscopic traces being left embedded in the surface of the contacts, you wouldn't be able to see them without a microscope. It just could affect the contacts over a decade later, possibly. It would also depend on how they're stored in the long term. Chrome doesn't rust either but serious bicycle restorers avoid using steel wool on chrome for that reason as rust can form on the surface, they use bronze wool which is why I mentioned it earlier. The bicycles being restored are usually 50+ years old so they're thinking of long term problems, as in any that could turn up decades later. Bronze wool is also used in marine environments as steel wool definitely will rust when used there.
I've removed silver rental stickers off labels before, you have to heat them up with a hair dryer first and slowly peel them off. Then clean off what's left with Goo Gone. I try to avoid them too but I sometimes get them in bundles of other games. Price stickers can be tricky too. I do clean the contacts first as I don't want to dirty up the system, if that gets dirty it will also dirty up every game you put into it.
I said I enjoy cleaning carts, not deflowering them.
ALL HAIL THE 1 2 P
Chrome is not a comparable material, nor is its application at all similar to that of the contacts on a cartridge.
First off, nothing is built out of chrome. Chromed bike and car parts are made of steel about 99% of the time. Chrome doesn't rust, but, as it's just a coating, it's susceptible to chipping, cracking, etc. When that happens, the steel underneath is obviously exposed to water and oxygen and you get rust, obviously.
Brass contacts are just that, brass contacts. There's nothing underneath that could potentially be opened up to the elements and rust.
So, no steel is penetrating the surface and planting some microscopic time bomb. It's apples to oranges. I can totally understand a concern for any wool that could be left over on the board, but again, that's really easily cleaned up without any headache.
I'm sure bronze wool would work great as well, but I'm just not convinced that there's any real benefit in doing so, not to mention that it's more than 5 times the price.
Just wanted to say thanks to all of you that responded with ideas for how to get rid of permanent marker on carts. I've got some new ideas to try out on those stubborn old N64 and NES carts!
I've independently heard that it is bad to use steel wool on any metal surface you don't want corrosion on (and/or to look nice). With reference to the chromed surfaces, it isn't that the steel wool is going to somehow penetrate the chrome coating and cause any affect on the steel beneath it, but rather the trace/microscopic bits of steel embedded in the surface will themselves corrode and not look very good, and possibly facilitate additional problems like pitting.
I don't really think it is that big of deal, but there are plenty of other abrasives that work great without any such risk.
Another big thing to consider is that carts don't get exposed to outdoor weather, whereas bikes and cars are. I can completely understand the logic behind the trace steel wool theory, but I just can't believe that it would pose a serious issue with carts. The other non-issue with carts is that the contacts are not going to have pits in them like an old chromed bike part will. Pits aren't caused by the steel wool, but the steel wool can most definitely enter existing pits and exacerbate the problem. And if the pitting is bad enough that it exposes the steel part underneath, then the problem compounds. Again, there's no steel under cartridge contacts, and pitting isn't an issue that I've ever seen in my 25+ years of collecting, and I disassemble EVERY cartridge that passed through my hands.
Hell, bronze oxidizes too. Most every metal does. If the contacts were gold, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion
I've been cleaning every game cart that comes into my collection that I didn't buy brand new, though there are a good chunk of NES/SNES games from my "early days" of collecting that I still haven't gotten around to opening up and cleaning.
Whenever I go out to search for more games, I do often came across dirty game carts. I used rubbing alcohol and ear swabs to clean the contacts while using nail polish to clear out the markersA clean game cart is a happy game cart and it works wonders on booting it up on a clean game system.
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well, i think it is most proper to give care to our collections / treasures , and one part of that i think is cleaning them up , that's at least for our own good also. Cleaning them up purchase after purchase makes it easier i guess. I don't want to clean a pile of 2 or 4 months bunch of finds.
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I even thoroughly clean "cleaned and tested" ebay purchases, often finding them grimy inside and black on the contacts. Dirty liars...
Huh, I never thought of it like that. When I think 'cleaned and tested', I think the cart has been cleaned (on the outside) and then tested to work just fine in a system. Not every seller knows to clean the contacts, nor would I really trust most of them to open up carts and all. I have seen people say 'contacts have been cleaned', though even in that case some people are probably just swiping an alcohol q-tip across the contacts and calling it clean.
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