Quote Originally Posted by gbpxl View Post
I never understood the fetishization of toys/video games where there is value in just having them in your posession still in the shrinkwrap. I could see doing that with a game like Stadium Events or some other crappy game I dont wanna play. Hard to get into the mind of someone trying to get every NES game sealed.
It's a combination of a bunch of different things - different reasons for different people, who think differently about these things.

Some people obviously just want it because everyone else seems to.

Other people might want it as a representation of, or return to, their younger selves. Lots of disappointment in consumerism throughout life - you see something to buy, think it's going to make you happy, then you get it and it doesn't live up to your hopes. Maybe having something sealed represents that state of expectation someone is in before getting it...and with something as popular as this, there's the idea that maybe the dream doesn't disappoint? That what's waiting in that sealed box is something that will live up to expectations? Kind of like a time capsule, I guess.

It's also possibly the closest thing available to the "original". Shigeru Miyamoto's sketches, or whatever - something brand new, as it existed in 1985, is a piece of history. The Mona Lisa is only popular because everyone says it is - and Super Mario Bros. was kind of a revolution, at the time, that is still reverberating today. Who wouldn't want a copy of the first movie shown in a theater, for example? The first wax cylinder upon which a piece of music was released / sold? Especially if you were there at the time and have fond memories of it yourself.

Maybe later generations will come by and have no personal connection to that moment in time and think it's ridiculous, the way we have no idea how old tin soldiers or kewpie dolls could ever be worth it for someone. A lot of it might just be people wanting to return to the wide-eyed innocence of youth - to a simpler time when things were better for them and the world. They might not even be able to think through their emotions; it might just be instinct. I dunno.