Why I like beat up falling apart game guides.

[Tabonga | 2,533]

A long time ago I found a beat up and falling apart copy of this in a thrift store.  I bought it despite its decrepit state and separated all of the pages,  I then placed them in clear binder pages and put them in a ring binder.   Makes using the guide whilst playing really easy since the thing will stay open without having to coerce it.

I only have a few since I only want to do this with really poor examples of guides - Vandal Hearts II, Link's Awakening and the Minish Cap.

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Wandering Tellurian

[RH | 5,344]

I'm a conflicted man. I love these things in mint condition, with all posters or trading cards intact OR rough around the edges, well loved, and plenty of notes and diagrams scratched in the margins! Both are things of beauty.

[Tabonga | 2,533]

9 minutes ago, RH said:

I'm a conflicted man. I love these things in mint condition, with all posters or trading cards intact OR rough around the edges, well loved, and plenty of notes and diagrams scratched in the margins! Both are things of beauty.

I only do it with ones that are literally falling apart or water damaged since those books aren't salvageable.

Normally I consider it a high crime to destroy a book.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Wandering Tellurian

[RH | 5,344]

6 minutes ago, Wandering Tellurian said:

I only do it with ones that are literally falling apart or water damaged since those books aren't salvageable.

Normally I consider it a high crime to destroy a book.

Well, it depends on the purpose of the book.  If you have a novel or something intended to be consumed and enjoyed, I like to keep it in great shape.  I use to read a lot of paperback novels as a kid.  I'd read them but pinch the spine so that I'd never crack them and they'd look new when I was done.

But in college, I used a textbook to my advantage. I wrote notes in them and highlighted important details.  They were meant to be used and consumed.

A game manual is kind of in the middle.  As a kid, I'd treat them like I treated my novels.  However, when I see a well loved manual with all of those details from someone else, I respect their choice to thoroughly use up a guide and if they discarded it after their use, I still like preserving their history.  I find it fascinating.

[G-type | 2,890]

I should put my NES game atlas in a binder.

[Tabonga | 2,533]

2 minutes ago, RH said:

 

But in college, I used a textbook to my advantage. I wrote notes in them and highlighted important details.  They were meant to be used and consumed.

I generally didn't do that with mine since it would be a drag on the resale value - might have been different if the college textbooks hadn't been so ridiculously expensive - even back then.  I think the only college textbook I still have is a western Civ book that I managed to spill a bottle on  somehow.

[RH | 5,344]

1 hour ago, Wandering Tellurian said:

I generally didn't do that with mine since it would be a drag on the resale value - might have been different if the college textbooks hadn't been so ridiculously expensive - even back then.  I think the only college textbook I still have is a western Civ book that I managed to spill a bottle on  somehow.

Well, in college was right when eBay and half.com were taking off.  I would buy a book at half price and then sell it back to the reseller for usually just a few dollars under what I paid.  In the end, my textbooks were usually pretty cheap after the buy and resell cycle.  The school even tried to not release textbooks we needed and edition numbers until about a week before class in order to protect the seller.  There reasoning was that not everyone could buy online (and was kind of true) and if they wanted to have the inventory available, the sellers required realistic purchase numbers.

I wonder how that's turned out in the day and age of Amazon selling everything nearly 20 years later.  That was a losing battle, no doubt.

[MuNKeY | 241]

I had a Final Fantasy NES guide and I wore that damn thing out to the point it fell apart and I took it and separated it all and placed them in sheet protectors and placed it inside a binder and I think years after that I gave it away to a friend of mine and far as I know they still have it 

[Tabonga | 2,533]

@RH

 

Heh - we didn't even have pcs back then - TI had just comeout with the first calculator - which only did the 4 basic functions and cost $300 (which was a really really large sum of money back then).

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Wandering Tellurian

[Tanooki | 5,193]

It's a good way to save a lot of money, but I just never can pull the trigger on damaged goods, especially when it is severe.  I used to have the Super Metroid guide for a couple years I picked up despite one of the 2 poster fold out pages missing 1/2 of one side flap because the loss was minimal of the useful map on the page and it was $5.  Fair to say though, price it low enough damage to a point is tolerable.

[twiztor | 930]

i've got a Final Fantasy 7 guide that has warped a bit and has a little water damage. would be worthless to sell, so i just keep it. still use it whenever i go back to the game