Tobias made repro laserdisc dvds in mini sleeves.
...ok. Not really the same thing. First off, he's a game bootlegger and these are game footage LDs we're talking about (I assume) so it's still pretty much game bootlegging. Secondly, once having made the thing it's only logical to make some kind of case for it. Shrinking the LD packaging was the closest thing to what he does with all his other overpriced crap.
To be clear, all collectors value completeness to some extent. With gamers though it seems to have gotten way out of control. A game can't just come with every single thing that originally shipped with it, %100 complete, it has to have a case or something, some 20 years later inkjet bullshit. It has to have a shock box. It has to be %115 complete. The "outer box" is the stupidest. It was stupid when they invented it, having no purpose whatsoever, but it's even stupider to reproduce the thing and then put it in plastic to protect from damage something that never should have been made in the first place since the standard CD case inside is more durable than the plastic or the cardboard already. A feedback loop of otaku fetish runaway.
A lot of Canadan CD singles in the 90s came with no insert, track listing printed on the CD, viewable through the case. I've ever seen anyone make a replacement one. The very idea would be ridiculous and fake and like something a child would do.
I've see people make back inserts for pack-in Ys, the Hudson music sampler, cases for Magical Chase etc. There is apparently some kind of compulsion.
Is this the same thing as what Neo Geo Freak did, democratized and in a different era? Or is it some other disease?
I have a copy of JB Harold with all the note pages filled it. I love it. It's "unclean" but it's logical and cool and in-period and frankly it's cute. If I bought a game with a fake box I'd just give it to one of you weirdos or throw it in the trash unless it was really fun, like if you drew Super Mario vaping with Bonk and Flink as a cool new cover for Axelay. I'd keep that.