How did YOU case your collection?

[Marcus_CA]

I'm curious, how did YOU case your collection? I started not too long ago and your experiences are probably better than mine

Questions that can help the discussion:
Which country do you live in?
Which case did you buy? From which provider and for what purpose? Was the shipping expansive?
Did your manuals fit, or did you have to mod your case? What about the end-product quality?
Any other personal thoughts?

--

I live in Canada so I pay an extra 25$ or so for shipping cross borders from media shelving. 69$ for 100 cases doubles after all the expenses but if I think about it, it's not that bad paying ~1.25$ a case.

I was thinking on casing my NES, SNES, N64 and Sega(when I get to those) in those UGC. I think I have to mod it so that manuals can fit in the case... even though there's no manual clips to hold them in place. I'll have to deal with them being lose in the case. I haven't received them yet either so I can't share my experiences yet. I'll be getting a multi tool to zip through the plastic too for those NES games and manuals.

For GB / GBA games will be have to be reproduction DS cases with GBA slots ... I still haven't decided from where to buy. Many have said the quality sucks so I'm a little bummed and scared to start casing these games. Again, the multi tool to aid GBA games to fit in the case.

For PS1 games ... many of the ones I buy come in cheap factory cases that fall apart. For that reason, I'll be getting polly cases to uniform my collection. I still haven't decided from where to buy and how it'll go down.

PS2 and current gen cases are simple.. there's reproduction cases everywhere at a reasonable price.

I'll update this post with links, pictures and personal experiences as I case my collection.

[Arseen]

I live in Finland
UGCs were out question because of the price, so I went with double-wide DVD cases.
The SNES sized manuals fit perfectly, the cases don't have clips to hold the manual, but some more expensive ones do.
I get them from Rivierapublishing in UK.
Shipping is not that bad, I paid less than 1Euro per case, 80 cent I think.
Quality is really good, and UGC sized covers fit fine (for perfect fit they would need 55 more height).
Currently I'm waiting for SeymorOnion to finish his cases.

[e_brugal]

Well, i start my collection recently, think it was a year ago. as some of you know i live in the Dominican Republic (it won't be cheap to buy cases for me ), and i haven't buy any cases yet because:

1- I'm waiting for Onion Cases to be for sales (SeymorOnion), onion cases will hold manuals (the waiting is long)
2- Decided not to buy UGC because it can't hold manual and don't like to have the manuals apart from the game.
3- There's other option, Vacuum formed cases that can hold manuals but from my experience with that kind of plastic particularly i don't like them.

My collection for now is based only with console games not handheld and think i will stay that way 

So, basically i'm collecting games and manuals and they are right now naked  , hope to case them soon

[Megatron]

I started my cases a year ago last month.  It has been a very exciting 13 months and I am almost done casing my entire collection (which is only about 700-800 games, so compared to some it is miniscule).

For my NES, SNES and N64 I went with the UGCs.  I live in the US, so shipping wasn't too bad.  I forget what I paid, but 200 cases ran me under $150 shipped.  For my Genesis games, 32x and Sega Master System, I opted to use the original black clamshell cases that they came with.  This meant augmenting a lot of covers to fit these cases, as well as modding some of the cases to fit 32x games and Sonic & Knuckles

In terms of style, for NES I opted for the universal Black Bar logo at the top of the spine.  For SNES and N64 I went for the standard vertical format.  While I was tempted with the white template for N64, I currently use the red/green template.
For my Genesis games I decided to make all of them the red stripe boxes, so as to avoid the black/checkered/multicolor EA spines.  Instead there is a smooth red stripe uniform. 

For all handhelds I opt for the DS cases.  I have some official Nintendo ones, but most are the cheap knockoffs.  While vastly inferior plastic, they're so cheap that if I screw up I can just grab another without any concern. 

I also really enjoy collections.  So while most of my games use the retail images and spines, some games I prefer to have a cool ensemble cover set, such as Lumberjack's Legend of Zelda and Mega Man series, or the Resident Evil Gamecube collection. 

[FritzWhite]

Well, i start my collection recently, think it was a year ago. as some of you know i live in the Dominican Republic (it won't be cheap to buy cases for me ), and i haven't buy any cases yet because:

1- I'm waiting for Onion Cases to be for sales (SeymorOnion), onion cases will hold manuals (the waiting is long)
2- Decided not to buy UGC because it can't hold manual and don't like to have the manuals apart from the game.
3- There's other option, Vacuum formed cases that can hold manuals but from my experience with that kind of plastic particularly i don't like them.

My collection for now is based only with console games not handheld and think i will stay that way 

So, basically i'm collecting games and manuals and they are right now naked  , hope to case them soon

My manuals fit in the case just barely. I just set them on top of the cart and the case bulges ever so slightly, but that's because the carts have the dust covers also. It's redundant to have a dust cover on a cased game, but it makes the game fit the case snug, plus it came with the game originally.

I don't like it when the cart rattles around in there

[e_brugal]

Well, i start my collection recently, think it was a year ago. as some of you know i live in the Dominican Republic (it won't be cheap to buy cases for me ), and i haven't buy any cases yet because:

1- I'm waiting for Onion Cases to be for sales (SeymorOnion), onion cases will hold manuals (the waiting is long)
2- Decided not to buy UGC because it can't hold manual and don't like to have the manuals apart from the game.
3- There's other option, Vacuum formed cases that can hold manuals but from my experience with that kind of plastic particularly i don't like them.

My collection for now is based only with console games not handheld and think i will stay that way 

So, basically i'm collecting games and manuals and they are right now naked  , hope to case them soon

My manuals fit in the case just barely. I just set them on top of the cart and the case bulges ever so slightly, but that's because the carts have the dust covers also. It's redundant to have a dust cover on a cased game, but it makes the game fit the case snug, plus it came with the game originally.

I don't like it when the cart rattles around in there

I know that they fit  but i don't like to have them in the case without being secure, when you open the case a think you have to be careful to not let the manuals drop to the floor, Right?

[FritzWhite]

when you open the case a think you have to be careful to not let the manuals drop to the floor, Right?

If you try to put the manual where it normally goes then it could fall out when you open it, but even with the dustcover on the cart, the manual sits just below the edges of the case when I place it on top of the cart instead of behind the front of the case where a manual would normally go if there were tabs to hold it. I've never dropped a manual when it's been placed on top of the cart.

For me, the downside is that it bends the bottom of the manual ever so slightly when the case is closed, but I'm really not that anal that I'm going to go get my stuff graded. It doesn't damage it and I have the manual and the game all protected in one case.

[redsox2012]

I collect mostly Sega Genesis, so I use original Sega clamshells for my games.  Luckily, it's easy to find sports games for around $1 here, so I have no problem getting cases.

I don't like UGC's for Genesis games because they don't fit snugly.  I'm glad Sega had the foresight to make sturdy cases for (most of) their games.  On one hand, it makes complete games easier to find because more have survived over the years, but it also means that Genesis games are worth slightly less than complete original SNES games, as many SNES cardboard boxes were damaged or destroyed.

[kaysow]

swedish here so shipping for ugcs is ridiculous.
ds cases are great for gb/gba so i have a bunch of those, but no covers yet since i'd rather make my own.
gonna recase my psx games because the fat jewelcases we had for those in europe and japan all break really easy and are getting hard to come by. black dvd keepcases of varying sizes is an easy and practical solution, but i'm constantly tempted to get me some polys, those look really sleek.
for carts and such i'm waiting to see how the onion cases turn out.
in general i'm just working on my templates, doing some trials with what i've got.

[AxelSteelBMX]

I live in the U.S. (hi-ho, northern neighbor!), and have been casing spare cartridges in UGCs since I joined The Cover Project. I got mine from Media Shelving back when a case of 100 was still less than $50. It's kinda ridiculous how much the prices have shot up since then. Shipping was super-cheap. I probably live close to their distribution center.

As far as manual storage goes, my issue with manuals inside UGCs is the same as others': they're very iffy deals. SNES and N64 manuals are a crapshoot, since while they will fit inside with minor bending like FritzWhite illustrated, you're screwed with thicker manuals. My Chrono Trigger instruction manual is too thick to fit inside the UGC with the cartridge, so I have no choice but to store it separately. However, in the case of NES manuals, I like to put the cart inside of a dust sleeve WITH the manual. The few NES manuals I have are thin enough that this arrangement seems to work out pretty well, and prevents the manuals from falling out.

[Marcus_CA]

I love all your comments everyone, thanks!

I'm quite bummed about the whole manual storage ... I was also tempted to wait for onion but damn, it's been years and I mean YEARS since the idea came up and only two products are out. I don't know if I can wait that long.. even though NES cases are suppose to come out this year, but still, not official - I think?

If only mediashelving make their cases half an inch bigger with clips.. I'd be sold instantly.

[JakeHC]

I live in Australia so things are ridiculously expensive to get out here. It costs 200+ for shipping on a carton of UGC

So those are kind of out of the question. I've managed to source cheapish NDS cases, they're third party but they have the GBA Slot.
In order to remedy my lack of UGC, I'm going to be buying some double-wide dvd cases, 27mm. They should hold everything I own, including atari games which I don't think UGC do?

Not too sure, no modding but they're loose. Oh well, win some lose some. I'll post some photos of my collection when it's all made up.

[Beastman1975]

Most of my games have their original boxes except my nes collection , traded it all in back in the day and have  been sorry about it ever since , ive replaced most of those  games but mostly catridge only so i use UGC's for snes and nes and for my gba i use Ds cases ,  i wanted a uniform look so all my snes and nes games have gone into ugc's  i just left the manuals in the original boxes and have them stored away safe in  bins

im in need of a new printer so i can finish printing covers but thats on hold at the moment

[larryinc64]

I store manuals in binders.

I have SNES, N64, and Genesis games in UGC, and NES, Atari 2600, and some GB games loose, some in Cassette cases, 2 in 3DS.

[JDavis]

I'm casing my collection... complicatedly.

First, I'm in the US

For SNES, N64, SMS, Genesis, and 32X I bought a single 100-case box of UGCs from mediashelving back before they increased their prices... which at the time was more than sufficient for my collection... but my collection has grown a lot since then. After a long internal debate over the retail-like horizontal covers and the more-case-fitting vertical covers, I decided to throw both options out the window and just go custom.... But a custom style of my own design that's intended to match the modern retail cases for disc-based games. Unfortunately, due to many mitigating circumstances, my progress on that front has been slow and I've only completed four covers. . . . Which might be for the best since I plan to replace these cases with Onion cases as they become available. As discussed previously by others, the manuals fit but aren't held in place and can be bent a little.

For DS and GBA I've been going with DS cases, and built up a decent enough stack of OEM cases that I'm a long ways from settling for wonky third party ones. I'm just using the covers on the site for these. As is well documented, GBA manuals do not fit without some modification of the case.

For GB/GBC I've gone the route of 3DS cases, which hold the cartridges fairly well with a little modification (not cutting, just adding foam to hold the thing in place), and hold the manuals perfectly well, too.

... For NES I've currently just got the carts sitting on the shelf loose for two reasons: 1: Waiting for Onion cases. 2: Insufficient space.

Everything else is either in the normal cases they come in (jewel cases, dvd cases, blu-ray cases, UMD cases, etc) or loose (Game Gear and NeoGeo Pocket/Color)