Switching from CIB to Game-only

[Nz17]

Have you ever started collecting for a console only to eventually hit a price roadblock or another personal reason and jump ship from complete copies of games to cart/disk-only?

[Aussie2B]

Maybe in terms of what I bother to hunt down, but I've never decided to sell off manuals and boxes by themselves just for the uniformity of having collections that are either all CIB or all loose. I'll always be happy to get a CIB game, even if most of the others I have are loose.

[drludos]

In a way I do.

I started collecting quite late, so price were already rather high. For my SNES collection (my main focus, about 100 carts in total), most of them are in loose state, but I've been able to find some of them CIB.

As the CIB titles I have are good games (Contra III, Zelda III, Secret of Mana, Yoshi's Island, Wario Woods...), I've kept them in my collection, but stored separately. The carts themselves are stored alongside all my other SNES carts, while the few boxes and manuals I have are stored elsewhere. It may sound stupid, but that way, when I want to play them, I don't have to seek two different places to find a game.
Same goes for my Gameboy collection, and my tiny NES and Genesis ones.

However, I'll be honest: If I could afford it, I would definitively have made a CIB collection, at least for the SNES.

[Nz17]

For most of my console games such as NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, GG, and NGPC ones, I keep the cartridges separate from the paper boxes and manuals. That way I don't bend nor damage the cardboard boxes nor booklets when retrieving or returning the games, and it is faster to get the games without the fuss of the papers and folds.

For the NES games I have the original Nintendo-branded black dust sleeves protecting the games for many of them; for others, I have non-branded black sleeves or the plastic all-around cases for the carts which I procured back in the old days. For many of the NES carts, though, they don't have any of these things as that is how they were when I acquired them.

For SNES, some of them have cases, and others have those official semi-clear contact covers from Nintendo.

For the others carts with plastic cases such as DS and 3DS, I keep the cases separate, lined up on shelves, while the games are either stored as a lot in small, fast-access cardboard boxes, or specialty cases which hold many of DS/3DS games for simple organization and alphabetical sorting.

Most of the disc-based games I keep in their cases, except for some Wii games which I have stored on a CD spindle. I own a few PS and PSP games which didn't arrive with cases. In those "case-less cases," I store the games in CD wallets, including a specialty wallet made just for UMD's. Unfortunately, it seems CD/DVD wallets are growing more uncommon.

[WulfeLuer]

For me, it's always been a case-by-case basis. Way back when I was a kid, I was less interested in keeping a box than the books, which paid off a bit here and there. Starting about 15 years ago, my policy was geared more getting a game in playable condition then whether it has the goodies. On the other hand, since I was very much still zeroed in on PS1 RPGs, getting CIB games was (and mostly still is) worth the extra bit of hassle. This still holds true for most of what I decide to nab (PS1 still, but now PS2, PS3, and 360) since it's still fairly simple to do. However, the reintroduction of SNES into my life has also revealed that I usually can't afford anything but a working cart for any given game. I decided that having a playing collection with all the games I want is a much higher priority than getting a few boxed games I'd be hesitant to play.

[Tanooki]

I guess I did hit that roadblock but it was years ago. Back when the greed crept into the Nintendo stuff around 2011 and people started to make you pay by the piece, not by the game is when I quit bothering on such things. I feel when you buy a game you're buying the package and if that package is loose, with a manual, or all there, it shouldn't dramatically change in the value. To me that's like going to the store to buy a Switch game now, let's say a Nicalis title first run. Do I pay $30 for Cave Story+, but then if I want the keychain, that's another $5, and the NES wannabe manual that's another $5, and then the box and art adds another $10? Nope. Used games were like this up until about a decade ago. At first it was reasonable, you paid like a $5-10 premium to get the whole deal, that I can understand and I can see why as it's enticing then. But when you're taking a game, then asking full price for it loose, then doubling that price or tripling because you have the rest of the materials it came with included is just sleazy and I don't do it when it comes to cartridge games.

That said, and thankfully it doesn't seem to mess with the price much, I do still buy CIB when it comes to discs since they're notoriously easy to lose or damage due to the lame fragile design of them, and same with DS/3DS game cards too when I got those.

[gbpxl]

Have you ever started collecting for a console only to eventually hit a price roadblock or another personal reason and jump ship from complete copies of games to cart/disk-only?

Yes, mostly due to space constraints. I live in a small apartment. It sucks when a shelf gets tipped over and some of your once-mint boxes instantly become worthless. I do feel like a cartridge is naked without its box and manual, but yeah I don't have an unlimited source of funds for a CIB collection

[AceAerosmith]

If I can't get a CIB, then NO SALE. I don't want some second-hand scratched up, beat up shit people list as Like New. I just paid $26 for KOTOR 2 CIB and the thing looks like they just pulled the shrink-wrap off. I'll pay more if the game looks like this one does.