You remind me of the Angry Video Game Nerd.

Yeah a lot of bullshit things happen to old games. They mostly happen because people don't think of the long term.

Someone in early 2000s- "Oh, well I better sell this old Earthbound game so I can pay for college. I guess I'll just put this convenient sticker right in the front of the cartridge, then they won't have to ask me about the price. Hmm... should I sell it with a box? Nah, NO ONE wants one of those!"

I mean its infuriating! Today a mint condition, in-box copy of Earthbound is worth A SHIT TON! But people do asinine things like stickers or even sharpie marker to the game's original cartridge and box which really hurts the game's value and makes people not want to buy them.

Luckily in the modern disc generation we don't have lame stickers to damage the long term value of our game... nah we have publisher antics like pre-order exclusives or on-disc DLC for that!

@sLORT: Believe it or not, I wasn't trying to sound like the AVGN. Though, in this entry, I am an angry video game nerd.

@Colon: Oh god, don't remind me of sharpies. At least there are ways to remove sharpie marking with minimal damage.

And don't think with discs we've escaped from it. Case damage. Water damage on the paper sleeve. Tears in it. Markers that penetrate the plastic through to the paper. Something poking the edge through the clip part's indentation, tearing the paper. These are things I have seen. D:

As a fellow collector, this pisses me off to no end. I take extremely good care of all of my games*, and quite frankly don't understand how some people do the things they do to some games. Seriously, don't sharpy your name all over the disc AND case of an otherwise great condition Silent Hill 2. Don't leave a black label copy FF7 around on the ground and let people step on and break the case (luckily, I had a green label case that was perfect, so between the two, I had a great condition black label copy which I sold to a friend for $35 and lunch. I know I'm a collector, but I needed the money ).

I can understand why some people who don't know what things are worth and are idiots do that kind of thing, but I have absolutely no patience for stores that do this kind of thing. I know there are easy-to-remove stickers, you don't need to ruin labels and cases with you super mega adhesive price stickers >_<
I'll only buy games like this if they're rare and there's not a good chance I could find it anywhere else for that price (seriously, my Gamestop is great about underpricing old games. P3FES, SMT: Nocturne, and Ikaruga, all with original case and manual for $20 each?? Hell yes )

Garage sales are still the best. Everybody uses those little colored dots or masking tape, both of which come off very well. Or they just don't label them at all

And the prices you can get! So many casuals who see a game with cool cover art, find out it's some niche JRPG, and never touch it for years. Then they have a garage sale and sell a mint copy of Odin Sphere for two motherfucking dollars. I nearly had a heart-attack when I saw it :D :D

(I know it's dropped to about $20-$25 since then, but it was worth at least $30-$40 when I got it)

*The one exception was when I had a game (Dungeon Dice Monsters for GBA) which I hated and wanted to stress test. I threw this thing as high as I could into the air over concrete, put it through the washing machine several times, dunked it in liquid nitrogen, covered it in catnip and let my cat chew on it, and it still worked perfectly Then I took a machete to it and it finally broke.

^GBA games are really durable, then.