Loose Disks and Sealed Collecting

I couldn't find this anywhere else but after reading a few irate topics on the matter, I was wondering if I am the only one who isn't really bothered by a loose disk or two in their collection? I see some buyers who throw fits upon finding out a disk is loose inside. My philosophy has always been that an item is factory sealed as long as someone hasn't touched or messed with it. I feel by extension a lose disk is a natural cause, brought on by shipping, time or even the factory that produced it.

Case in point, I had two factory Sealed Vagrant Story's and wanted to sell one. They were both flawless and except one had an attached security barcode and the other had a loose disk. I sold the bar-coded one.

But that's just me, and there are certainly others who detest the idea. I guess it causes a paradox to me, because the only reason I figure people are upset by it is because they feel the disk could be damaged. But what relevance is this mindset when thinking about something that will seemingly never be opened or exposed to the light of day? To me, it's like worrying about watering a plant left inside a bank vault you know can never be opened again anyway. Maybe the value of sealed gaming rests upon it's ability to be played again if one so wanted, and not simply in preserving a factory sealed copy of what it was when produced?

Anyway, that's my thought of the day. Was wondering what everyone else thought.

J=-

I'm in the camp that gets really bothered by that. You just know that the disc is damaged so in my opinion it is almost worth less than a mint, opened copy. For me, a mint factory sealed game must be perfect and having a loose disc makes it anything but. Plus, it's annoying when you want to look at it and you hear the thing rattling around in there.

It's a funny thing, but I am more concerned about the condition of the outer case than I am with loose discs. Granted, i'm not a fan of loose discs, but I learn to live with them. I find that a fair few of my sealed Dreamcast games and PlayStation games have loose discs inside, but at the end of the game it's not really anything worth worrying about seeing as the game is staying sealed and sitting on the shelf gathering dust. It's not as if they're constantly in use or anything. Loose pips inside bother me more though, which is a bane where PAL Dreamcast games are concerned.

I have three copies of Virtual Kasparov on the PlayStation (PAL), all sealed. One has a cracked case, another has ripped cellophane, and the third is perfect. All three have loose discs, yet the latter is the one I intend to keep. Naturally I would prefer a 100% perfect one - The loose disc may degrade the game perhaps, if there were some kind of grading system in place, but it's something you live with

Out of just over a 1,000 games I own, around 800+ are sealed, of which I would say about 600 were disc based (Opposed to cartridges). Of these, only a small handful have loose discs (Maybe a couple of dozen at most, some of which I own doubles anyway) - I find that it's mainly PAL PlayStation and PAL Dreamcast games that suffer the most from loose discs, with the occasional PS2 game which suffers the same fate, and mostly seems to be the cheapies that suffer the most (Although I do have one or two rares that have loose discs, that I bear with for the sake of the game being so rare to get in sealed condition)


Like a scratch down the side of your car, you learn to cope, even if you don't like it. A cracked case or badly torn cellophane riles me more, and most often than not i'd send a game back if it arrived in that condition, but if a game arrived with a loose disc then I leave it be

I would much rather have a tear on the shrinkwrap than loose discs. I have 2 Y-fold black FFVIIs, and one of them has got some tape on it in two places, but there are no loose discs. I remember the day I bought that (2 years ago), there was another Y-fold FFVII that was perfect but it had a loose disc. I dunno...loose discs are a very big pet peeve of mine lol

i never thought a loose disc would bother me but i have just bought halo 3 collectors edition and it arrived today with a loose disc . it bothers me . it might have happened whilst be shipped but i hear it rattling about inside and its horrible
so i have had to buy another now .

I dont see the problem with loose disks especially the one with ps1 type jewel cases(dual side).you just just hit it on one side and it settles in??
just drop it from 1-2feet high in your hand or bed and it usually settles in.ive dont this for ntsc/us xenogears and they are still in place.i thought every1 knew this lol.On the other hand its impossible to do this for ps2 dvd cases or tin cases.

i bought dino crisis ps1 jap,which comes in a normal cd-r type jewel case, and i found the disk was loose,i dont understand how the disk could come off the holder since theres no space to move inside.Maybe its broken??
anyone ever got a loose disk in a single sided jewel case?

fun2k wrote:I dont see the problem with loose disks especially the one with ps1 type jewel cases(dual side).you just just hit it on one side and it settles in??
just drop it from 1-2feet high in your hand or bed and it usually settles in.ive dont this for ntsc/us xenogears and they are still in place.i thought every1 knew this lol.On the other hand its impossible to do this for ps2 dvd cases or tin cases.

i bought dino crisis ps1 jap,which comes in a normal cd-r type jewel case, and i found the disk was loose,i dont understand how the disk could come off the holder since theres no space to move inside.Maybe its broken??
anyone ever got a loose disk in a single sided jewel case?

Just one, Ikaruga for Japanese DC. That is my only single loose.

The other loose in general is vagrant Story, which goes along with your double case theory.

i have just recieved another sealed copy of halo 3 collectors edition and once again there is a loose disc ??
must be a common problem with the collectors editions ????
i'm not wasting my money on another , i will just need to live with it

happyheed wrote:i have just recieved another sealed copy of halo 3 collectors edition and once again there is a loose disc ??
must be a common problem with the collectors editions ????
i'm not wasting my money on another , i will just need to live with it

Most of the Halo 3 Collectors Discs were loose, if you do a yahoo search you will find stories about it. I curbed all that and bought 2 Legendary Editions.

Im not a fan of loose discs. For me it's important that the inside contents are mint and not shaking around instead. Discs can be damaged as well if they are loose.

Half-and-half.

On the one hand, I'm not always bothered by it, because I know that there often won't be any damage to the disk, simply because there's not much for them to scratch against and that - once cataloged and in my collection - they're not likely to move very much ever again.

However…

On the other hand, I know that CD/DVDs are fragile, and in fact this is the *whole reason* why I keep them sealed! To think that they might be damaged anyway makes them decidedly less worthwhile. For me, a sealed game with a game disk inside that could not be played due to damage, would be worth *nothing*, unless it was the last surviving box+instructions for that game, in any condition, in existence.

So yeah, unless I'm confident (however irrationally) that the game is not damaged (sufficient to make it unplayable), I'm unhappy with loose disks. BUT a loose disk doesn't make a game worthless to me unless I'm confident (again, however irrationally) that it is damaged. In short, I'll replace them eventually if I can, but they become decidedly low-priority.

On a sinister note, I've proven to myself by experiment that you can re-set loose disks on their peg for any game that has a flexible DVD-style case. This means any Wii, non-Japanese-GameCube, XBox, XBox 360 and PlayStation 2 game in a standard case (not any standard PS1 games or any kind of Sega console game). The cases can be pressed in with your thumbs to squeeze the disk against the back of the case, and if you've lined it up right, you can fix it on it's enter peg without damaging the box. And if not, you'll just scratch the disk some more and can try again :-( Substantially harder to detect than any reseal.

For me a loose disc would be like a sealed game missing the manual etc. Its not complete. Sure its sealed, but its not the perfect copy. A barcode is something i do not found irritating. It just shows that the game really has been in a store.

pandaholic wrote:For me a loose disc would be like a sealed game missing the manual etc. Its not complete. Sure its sealed, but its not the perfect copy. A barcode is something i do not found irritating. It just shows that the game really has been in a store.

I think the opposite. A sticker or barcode ruins it for me because it's not part of the game. It's something foreign that taints it. I usually turn around and resell games I get that have those white magnetic strips because they irk me so bad.

I keep going back and forth on loose disks, but in the end, though I would prefer to not have them, I don't think they would bother me too much. I don't collect any games sealed because I expect to open them later. I want to have an example of what they were / are like completely new and sealed. Even if I knew the contents were damaged, it doesn't detract from the fact that it was unavoidable, and the sealed game withstood the test of time staying sealed anyway.

loose discs are horrible, esp in a double pack... those piss me off the most.

i dont care how mint it is inside, but when you can hear something rattling inside, it means its not complete.

TSi wrote:loose discs are horrible, esp in a double pack... those piss me off the most.

i dont care how mint it is inside, but when you can hear something rattling inside, it means its not complete.

How is it not complete? Everything is in there. Its just not mint if that is what you meant to say.

Well it looks like PSX collection sucks in general...
I got my Grandia for psx today. The seller stated there was no loose disk inside. However it came with a loose one. Must have happened in a shipping process. And it sucks.
But you know what? It looks to me that in this stupid double jewel cases it's SO EASY for a disk to go loose that i should not care a lot about it. It may happen or may not happen. Pure luck/no luck in shipping process. You can't do anything here... So better keep your nerves i guess.

or you should buy only single jewel case games then DS

haha... too bad many psx games came in double jewel cases.

Dark Sol wrote:haha... too bad many psx games came in double jewel cases.

Not the best ones though...

*Dances to Bust a Groove*

not the best? cmon.. ff7, ff8, star ocean, grandia, hoshigami,... should i continue?

Dark Sol wrote:not the best? cmon.. ff7, ff8, star ocean, grandia, hoshigami,... should i continue?

*Still Dancing*

ohh damn...

You know what? I am pissed off. Another psx double jewel case arrives with a F*CKING LOOSE DISK!!!
Looks like it's so common it's not even funny.

At least my favorite PSX games in single cases

Biggest question of a lifetime for me is why a SINGLE disc games were still packed in double jewel cases?!?!?!?!?!?