ScuzzBlog: Diaries October 2026
Entry 26th October 2026: Post 1: Sealed gems - Trapped forever.
Sealed gems - Trapped forever.
Obsessive, compulsive always comes to mind when I come across items
stored away for no good purpose. I can reason with why I place disks
in disk boxes and label and archive them for ready access. What I
cannot reason with is why I insist on keeping certain cover disks
sealed inside their original cellophane packaging. I do have a
number of disks attached to magazines and that is fair enough, but
to have stacks of disks just sitting there sealed for eternity is
a bit obsessive.
Sadly I am unable to remove the disks from their plastic packaging.
For me they represent a moment in time, and somehow having them
sealed retains that magic. It reminds me of the days when I would
return home with fresh magazines and joy at uncovering the nuggets
of Amiga goodness held on these magical disks. Bonkers I know but
I again move the disks to a fresh local, knowing that a better
solution would be to open the packs and distribute them amongst
the larger collection. After all it is possible that they do not
work anyway, so what is the point. No matter how much I reason with
myself the disks remain sealed.
If only it ended there, but it does not. I have a vast amount of
my early Retro Magazine editions still sealed and have never enjoyed
the contents of the discs. Worse is that as the publication evolved
they placed the magazine and disc inside sealed outer packaging.
In these instances the magazine and contents remain totally unread,
trapped for eternity within the outer sleeve. I did at times buy
two copies of the magazine, but to this day they remain unopened.
Forgetting my mountain of comic books which sit on a shelf unit
here that is bowing under the weight I also have any number of
PlayStation and XBOX magazines that suffered the same fate. For
later in the production of these magazines there was a decision to
seal the whole magazine and discs inside a sealed outer presentation
sleeve. I was again confronted with ripping the outer packaging to
gain access to what was inside. I could never do it and so I have
this little mountain of magazines that remain to this day unopened.
I even have mens magazines such as Arena sealed and unopened , and
not even the inviting curves of Rachel Stevens have convinced me to
break the seal.
I know I am an obsessive collector and have been for many years but
why I continue to keep sealed items unopened bewilders me. Maybe it
harps back to my years in the seventies and eighties when I collected
stamps. Many of the stamps were held in special presentation packs
that were sealed. To break the seal rendered them valueless. I had
started collecting as an investment but gave up that notion when I
broke the chain of collecting in the eighties. My specialist field
of interest was definitive stamps and the oddities of incorrectly
printed stamps. I would collect blocks of four, gutter pairs and
the traffic light gutter pairs. It cost me a fortune and I never
questioned the merit of holding a small definitive stamp whose sole
purpose was the exchange of service of post for the cost of that
small stamp. So why place it in a collection ? More importantly why
collect blocks of two and four, just for the sake of it ?
Anyhoo, nothing changes. I am still collecting stuff for the 'sake
of it' and placing in my collection. It's not even for any possible
returns if I sell them later. I am pretty sure they will all end
up in a skip on my death due to some house clearers ignorance. So
why worry. Maybe I should place everything in cellophane and seal
up. Just joking.
Sealed gems - Trapped forever.
... and lastly some junk mail. Literally.
At least they had served their purpose.
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