Strange, but useful, finds.

One of the things I found most often at the outlet store were empty video game cases. How these cases were emptied is anyone's guess; whether they had been picked through by the crew who dumped them into the bins, the resellers ignorantly picking out the games and leaving the cases behind, or perhaps they were just empty cases when they turned up at Goodwill. Seeing what I've seen, I can assure you all three of those are very viable options.

Although PS2 cases were most prevalent, on occasion there was anything from Gamecube to Xbox 360. Original Playstation cases would pop up from time to time, but more often than not they actually contained the game, which was better than being empty. On rare occasions I would find game boxes, such as my Home Alone for the SNES or the two absolutely complete, other than the game, N64 boxes for Blast Corps and Nascar 2000.

My initial idea was to snag them and use them for video games that had generic cases, Shamestop stickers on them that just wouldn't come off, or damaged or otherwise boogered up cases. After I had swapped out all my cases, to my satisfaction, I kept collecting them for potential future swaps I may need to make. But then I came across a case that changed my idea of why I should pick them up and keep them.

Up to this point I was running across a lot of NCAA, Madden and other boring titles, so I never felt bad evicting sports titles from their cases to give the games I owned a better place to live. But just as I had done with the video game boxes, I found a video game case that was complete, and a game that I wanted to own. So instead of looking at this case as swap fodder, this was the first case I kept complete so that I could track down a copy of the game and have it CIB.

Crackdown was one of the first Xbox 360 games I had played, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I saw it as sort of an Xbox 360 Grand Theft Auto, before I had the chance to play GTA 4. So when I saw this case I quickly snatched it up, popped it open and was disappointed that it was empty. Oh well, at least I have the case! And I'll just have to buy myself a disc only copy from ebay, which is exactly what I think I'll do!