Rant... Why the **** do gaming stores do this?

So I go into this new gaming store in town that has a good selection of vintage games at decent prices. I spot a few Sega CD games in great condition. One looks like it just came out of the plastic and the other two were the pack-ins for the original system Sherlock Holmes and those Video CD's. Crap games I know but the original cardboard packaging was still in excellent condition and you don't see that often. The price stickers on the cases but I have bought enough to tell the types that are a bitch and those that come right off and these didn't worry me too much.

Long story short.... I was dead wrong on those stickers and they pretty much wrecked those pristine cases.

This frustrates me to no end. Wouldn't you think a store that sells vintage games and caters to collector's try and find something that doesn't wreck the condition instead of cheapening out on bargain basement price tags? Damn, It's hard enough to find used games in decent condition in the US without places like this ruining what is left out there.

 

some stickers are such a pain ! like cash converters in Australia they put these stickers with price and a barcode on them and they are not the easiest thing to remove without damaging items such as PAL saturn, N64 , Gameboy,Gameboy color and Advance games trying to remove them often damages the box ><

 

yeah its a proper PITA when you go somewhere and are really happy with a purchase only to find that it becomes a nightmare getting the damn label off!! used to have that with an old CD store in Watford (UK) you'd buy a nice second hand cd or dvd for a good price then tear your hair out trying to get the label off without tearing it or leaving a horrible residue or stretching the DVD case plastic!!

 

I know what you mean. I also have some SNES and GB/GBC games with stickers on the boxes. I hate it, but I am not even going to try to get them off because I know it will look worse. I have also seen stores that put the stickers on the inlay of the DVD case instead of on the outside so it is almost guaranteed that you damage it when you remove the sticker.

It is almost like most stores don't know that collectors exist, or they just don't care. For example the store where I buy most of my games. They keep only empty boxes on the shelves and store the discs and manuals behind the counter. Games by Blizzard have these nice cardboard boxes around the standard DVD case which for some reason always gets completely crushed on the shelves. I picked the only box that still looked nice and gave it to the guy behind the counter so he could get the discs. He went to the back and when he returned he gave me just the DVD case with the discs and threw the rest in the trash. When I asked for another copy he told me: "You only need the discs and the cd-key, most people don't want the other stuff." But luckily he gave me a brand new copy which hadn't been on the shelves and didn't have a price sticker yet.

 

Because they don't give a rats ass about anything but making profit. If they lose your business someone else will come along and buy the item even if it means getting $20 instead of $22.

Exactly. Most people don't want the other stuff. These stores have to cater to 98% of the people wanting to buy games; if they only existed for the tiny fraction of people who want everything complete in immaculate condition they'd go out of business in the first month. Simple economics.

 

wow, in all my years I've never heard of a store that threw away the packaging on the ASSUMPTION that you might not want it, how do you then prove you've purchased it at their store? I'm amazed to hear that this gets done, never seen it happen in the UK

 

i know what your are talking about. i was looking around in a 2nd hand shop for new resident evil stuff. after some time i found a boxed copy of biohazard 2 for the n64. the front looked superb but the back had a friggn price sticker on it -_- i ended up not buying it...

 

I've always hated the way stores do this. Gamestop is the worst offender. I rarely see games that come in cardboard boxes, so it isn't so much an issue of destroying the item. It's more just a pain in the ass, for games in plastic cases, because it takes forever to get off all the little bits of the sticker off, and there's always a sticky residue that's impossible to remove without some kind of cleaning product. I don't see why they can't use some kind of sticker that comes off easily, like a vinyl sticker, or maybe a small suction cup. Or better yet, just put the price on the shelf the game is sitting on. The same things apply to loose carts.

On a related note, one time I bought a boxed Japanese PSX flight stick. It was in good condition, but the seller shipped it in the box itself and put shipping labels all over it. Idiot.

 

this was an exceptionally bad problem for early Saturn games in the PAL region, we had dodgy larger than DVD size cases that had a plastic inner section while having a CARDBOARD outter wraparound cover, you can imagine my horror whenever I would try to attempt to remove stickers and fail epic-ly lol

 

GAME in the UK used to write a 4 digit number to help them find the games in their drawers. On the: discs, manual and back of box with permanent pen . I still have a few games with this on them. They later changed to printed stickers.

It was easy to remove from the DVD /Plastic boxes with white spirits but the disc and manual were nigh on impossible.

I use a small amonut of white spirits to remove any sticky residue from stickers on plastic boxes it comes off easily and cleanly.

To remove stickers from cardboard boxes such as saturn, snes etc

I use a hair-dryer on a low setting and gently heat the sticker first. it warms the glue and makes it much more plyable. You have to wear a glove as the heat starts to hurt your hand a bit! This really only works on stickers up to a few years old but not 20 year old bad boys as they are super dry and crispy.

For the dry stickers rub a very small amount of water onto the surface of the sticker itself (Not too much!) and let it soak for a moment this useally revives the 'sticky' part of the sticker. you can then warm it up and try to remove. This technique is a bit hit and miss but still better than just peeling.

 

oh god yeah that's right, I still have loads of stuff with that blasted marker pen writing on!! wow that used to piss me off lol.

The plastic on a DVD case was never the same again after removing a sticker, even if you got the sticker off the residue left behind ruined the plastic, stretching it and messing it up

 

Thats because by pulling it off you are stretching it.

Just remove the inserts and soak in water and it will just fall off.

Obviously no good for cardboard boxes, but those wont stretch anyway.

 

I used to use a bottle of stuff called "Sticky Stuff Remover" and while it would successfully remove the residue it wouldn't prevent tearing or damage to the card/dvd sleeve, the old Saturn cases in the UK were terrible for this as the colour on the card would just lift right off and you were left with a nice white price tag shaped mark on your game lol

 

If amazon sends a trade in item back they plaster stickers on it, ALMOST RUINED a FLCL Box I sent them. It was damaged a small bit due to their fuckwittery

 

that stuff is great, also i have not tried this but wd40 may work or anything with citris in it, but these may leave smells i'd recommend the sticky stuff remover, used to use it to clean sticky stuff off epos and office systems

 

That's why like buying from Chinese or Japanese game shops. They usually use Seal King or another brand plastic sleeves with self sealing openings on them and put all the stickers on that instead of the actual merchandise. That way you just slide the item out and throw away the sleeve.

 

My local HMV removes the original sealing on lots of new games and replaces it with their own shrink wrapping. But I think they do this so they can add a security/alarm sticker thing to the boxes.

 

This thread is the reason I tried really heard to get past my need for complete games, and started using UGCs... Then, like TPSNT said, you get carts that have crap all over them! I ruined the back of an otherwise pristine copy of Judge Dredd for SNES (I mean, shiny connectors) by trying to get a price tags off. Brings my blood to a boil.

 

Same here, it doesn't matter to me anymore, I got over it. Games are made to be played anyway.

 

My local game store does this,when its a boxed game they put a piece of painters tape on it then put the sticker price over that,painters tape comes off very easy and will not damage the box.