At what age did you learn the importance of keeping the box art and manual in clean condition?

[Mochi Panic]

The amount of people I met IRL that regret things like throwing away the manuals or just spilling liquids or food on their boxarts is way more common than I thought. For me at least, at age 15, I realize I should keep better care of my stuff. My grandmother and I lived in a bad neighborhood, so she would write my name on all my games and stuff so that if anyone stole it, I had some sort of evidence to get it back.

 

[DunkeyKong]

My uncle have been storing the box arts, manuals and basically the whole thing that came with it. He would put them in some cardboard box, in the closet or the wardrobe

Here's one of the examples

 

[Waffles]

When I started collecting, around age 17. I deeply regret not taking better care of my junk before that, not only because I wanted to, but also because I can now appreciate the huge amount of effort my parents had to put in order to get all of that for me.

 

[AtlasM]

Since the beginning, I guess. So maybe 7 or 8 years old. My mother won't buy me more toys if I broke one out of carelessness. Like stepping on a toy when I wasn't playing with it, because I didn't put it back in the toy box after playing. So, I learnt that to get more of these stuffs, I have to take care of the ones I own. I can't even weaponize crying to get toys, I'll only get whooped with a slipper. So, being good to my toys were literally the only way for me to get new toys.

That's why this habit extends to everything I own, including video game cartridges, video game CDs, DVDs, BDs, and their boxes. I always subconsciously thought that if I don't treat my things nicely, I don't deserve new ones

Don't have physical copies of anything anymore nowadays, tho. I've moved on to digital since my college days <- this is my way of cheating that feelings. I don't have to treat digital copy of my games nicely, anyway lol

 

[Clippy]

As a poor schmuck who never had a legitimate copy of a video game as a kid I never had that kind of epiphany really. The titles I bought as an adult are well taken care of or so I like to think at least.

Hardware is a different story, though. I've read and heard many stories of people getting frustrated with video games to the point of throwing their controllers/joysticks against the wall. I never did that not because I was some Zen master at the hearty age of 4 but because I knew that I wouldn't get another joystick if I frivolously broke the one I had and I'd have nothing to play my Amiga games with. That mindset transitioned to pretty much everything I've ever owned. Take care of what you have, try to fix it when it breaks, live with the damage if you can't fix it but it's still bearable. I have been violent with people who didn't respect my stuff and I will never apologize for that.

 

[bjork]

I kind of always did, but I never took my stuff over to anyone's house or anything, so it just went on a shelf or in a box and stayed nice. I did it with my toys when I was younger, and then with games it just made sense to do the same. I've since unloaded almost all that stuff, but everyone I sold to got a really sharp copy of whatever I they got.

 

[VampireLord1024]

Probably before I was 10, but I figured to keep everything together so I knew where it was in case I needed it and the same for putting the right game back in the right game box.

 

[ATenderLad]

Ugh, however old I am now, I guess. Now everything comes in easy-to-maintain cases. I wish I'd kept my NES/SNES boxes on a bookshelf or something, but with a bunch of younger siblings? They really never had a prayer.

 

[Yousef]

The very very very beginning. I always got mad when people didn’t care about box art or manuals hahaha.