Con someone please explain the technical differences of a ROM and an EPROM to me?

And so basically, what you are saying is that all cartridges will lose their data given time? So given 5-10 years my Atari and NES carts will be nothing but plastic pieces of junk?

That rather turns me off of collecting cart based systems. :/

Also, if this is true with carts, is it possible that the chips inside the consoles themselves will degrade? That kind of turns me off of collecting as a whole :/