if the intention is to leave it shrink wrapped and the box looks as good as new then you wouldn't notice the difference, it could even have a blank floppy and a safety booklet for a toaster inside instead of the game, how could you tell? (without x-ray, weighing it and other unlikely forensic measures)

shrink wrapping is easy enough as stated

in my view a shrink wrapped game is only moderately worth more than one that isn't, simply because its probably new - but the only way to know is to open it, and then it isn't shrink wrapped anymore - so clearly the shrink wrapped status is merely a temporary indicator of new-ness, to be tested as soon as possible

if one opens it, tests the contents and are new and then satisfied that they are then shrink wraps the box again then unless it is to give the box moderate protection it from dust & moisture the act is slightly mad!

Thanks to those of you who replied!

I don’t really care that much if it is factory sealed, as I’m not going to sell it (for now anyway), it’s just that I put sealed games in a separate kind of a “play later pile”, as I don’t want to hurt the value of it just in case I do happen to find an open one a reasonable amount of time after I bought the sealed one. Even at that, I’d probably just use the open one and display the sealed one, I’d probably really only sell it if it was insanely valuable. Also, I never (or very rarely) find doubles of games. Usually the one I buy, sealed or not, is the one that is cheap enough to justify my owning it, and every time I see it after that it’s usually always full price.

Again, I was just curious if it was sealed or not. Not really a big deal to me either way. The disc is rattling around inside, so I REALLY DO want to open it to fix that. But since I did just buy it a couple days ago, as I said, I don’t want to rush to open a sealed copy on the off chance I’ll find an open one in a few months. My sealed software shelf is pretty bare, so I’d like to add it to that shelf if I could.

And as I said in my original comment, the box is missing. This is just the jewel case and the manual, but I do have a couple of games on my shelf that have a cut tape seal on the box, but everything inside is still sealed. I consider that to be new still, even if collectors and resellers disagree.

Even if the box does has the original seal intact I'd argue it is not new anyway, just unused.....😀

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-10, 18:01:

Even if the box does has the original seal intact I'd argue it is not new anyway, just unused.....😀

True. You are not wrong.
Correction: New to me. 😜 Or N.O.S. to the pickers.