Legit question: Who are you preserving them for? Where do you envision those ball tops being in 100 years? In a museum where people want to look at 100 year old round pieces of colored plastic? If you enjoy putting them on display, more power to you, it wasn't a personal attack against you or anyone else who collects things. I just truly do not understand the mentality, nor do I believe the entire "preservation" aspect. Certain things should be preserved: priceless works of art, historical documents, recordings, films, even some pop culture items. I personally don't see video games and joystick parts in that last, but that's IMO.
I like looking at them, as I said before. People can derive joy out of stuff when it comes to preserving it. For example, I love the art of super famicom games so much, they make a killer visual display. Nobody is gonna burn on me for buying really cheap SFC rpg's anyways, since my main goal of that was to rip them to a UFO type device and apply a language patch. And japanese RPG's are worthless. The art on sfc games is up there for me. It is my favorite art ever for any era. That market is going to shit now to, so I'm lucky to have any of what I got.
It's not about specifics, it's about limitations. If a limited amount of anything exists, preservation comes into play. For me it is nostalgia and growing up during a certain era. Neo Geo was untouchable to me, I didn't grow up rich like others, so when I was able to acquire etc game, it was a big deal. I was one of those kids who'd look at gamefan magazine ads in the back, anyone remember those awful digitized dragon video adverts? That was me. I have yet to protect any of my neo-geo stuff though. I had no idea stuff would be this out of control, and I don't like the market as much as the next guy, because these prices are so high I'd feel like a fool being a part of it. Everyone is waiting for stuff to stabilize, but it's so fucking out of control, it's nuts. There's to much ignorant youth involved, to many greedy sleezy resellers. I hate scalping as a general concept, and that hatred has followed me into offline life. My other hobby is jewelry. I buy second hand jewelry and am quite knowledgeable on it, and you'd be surprised the sleezy fuckers who resell who ask me stupid things like 'is this silver', etc. I specialize in native american jewelry as a personal joy. I wear it, I collect it, the works.. I get noticed for my big mouth at times on what stuff is, and some people ask me advice. Guess who I like helping though? The old women who just want something to wear, someone who isn't in it for profit. I swear I have a third eye for the movements and behavior of resellers. I could write a book on the attitude.
The balltop issue is this, I wanted to get a complete LE display of sanwa balltops, they made some in like 2006 in limited quantities, and they have yet to reprint any of them. Nobody wants to sell them. I'd drop 50$ and 100$ on black metallic or cherry berry if it ever appeared, but it won't. I've tried everywhere and never found any after a certain point. It's just a fun elusive thing I chase. Mike Watson who ran super arcade had a tekken cab that had 2 x cherry berry balltops, I offered to buy one and he said he'd just give me one, but he couldn't since he didn't own that machine. So it's sort of a hunt for me.
