Who cares?
I bought them with the full understanding of what they were, as well the full understanding that a bootleg plays in my system (in this particular case) just as well as a non-boot. They work, I can play the games. What difference does it make to you if they are not VGA-sealed-forever-in-a-plastic-box-on-a-shelf worthy?
Edit: Wow, that came off awful dickish. Had a bad day and that just was terrible. Still, the point is, I bought them to play. Boots suffice just fine man, that's all I need.
Well yeah that was pretty retarded and overly defensive. I'm the guy raffling away a Sapphire boot, you think I care about the morals of you buying the stuff? The main reason why I asked was because the Atomiswave bootleg stuff last I heard was buggy as f*ck all. Unless the bootleggers ironed out all the bugs I don't see why anyone would want to drop serious money down on the stuff yet.
Ugh. An attack of stupid AND overly tired...batting 1.000 here. Lol, not only did I come across as an utter jerk before, I also completely missed the main point/question you were trying to make/ask. Sigh. Lesson to me, I suppose.
Now that I am more awake and less 'just coming from work', I can address the concerns you brought up a bit better. Like Punkic said, the few issues that do come up nowadays are actually relatively minor. I have seen a couple of the mentioned graphical glitches, and I think I recall a sound oddity in the copy of Neowave I last played, but that was about it. As for big money...not going to happen. When I come at games purely from the angle of purchasing for gaming use, I tend to look for gaming price as well. On that note, I do not believe that any of those cost me more than $40 or $50 + shipping, with several being a bit less than that. I can easily stomach pricepoints at that level for boots as long as they are still reasonably close to the originals, which most AW carts seem to be. Hope this answered any concerns you had, and again, my apologies for the previous post.