[game_preservation] Authenticating factory sealed games

[Jim Leonard]

Devin Monnens wrote:

> That's what I figured. The only conclusion I can make from that is that 

> it would increase the game's salability by passing off a used product as 

> 'new'. Definitely false advertising, but not something a kid like me 

> would have been looking for (though I DID have sense enough not to open 

> them).


Sometimes, they should be opened.  If the shrink is under question, the 
contents could be incomplete or missing.  I would rather have an opened 
verifiable item than a closed questionable item.  I suppose I wouldn't 
be very entertaining on Deal or No Deal :-)

The above is why I think VGA and all other professional grading of 
software/games is a sham.  Unless they xrayed it or something to see 
that it was complete, how can they properly grade it?

The thing that stopped wide-scale reshrinking was an early 1990s article 
by, I think, Jim Seymour (or some other PC Magazine writer, can't 
remember) where he bought QEMM (6.0?) for review from SoftWarehouse 
(later COMPUSA) and when he ran INSTALL he could see that the software 
had already had a prior owner's name burned into it as part of a prior 
registration.  Around that time there were also reports of people 
supposedly getting boot-sector viruses from stuff they bought at the store.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project:           http://www.mobygames.com/
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A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/