Sealed CDs: Better with stickers or not?

[Mapleton]

What's the general consensus?

I'm assuming sealed singles are more valuable than opened ones.

Are sealed CDs or even other formats (vinyl, etc) more valuable/collectable with retail stickers or without? Or does it depend on the sticker?

I'm looking at some Japanese singles and some of them retail or tax stickers on them. Some of them have factory sticks than promote the product, these I would imagine are important.

Also, having factory/retail/government stickers on them would also provie them are originally sealed, not an opened product that someone sealed back up.

Opinions?

 

[beau]

Whenever I buy a cd to play that has a sticker on the shrink, I cut it out and stick it in the booklet. If it's in these newer cardboard sleeve cases, I just slit the shrink at the opening and pull the cd out, leaving the shrink intact.

Japan has some great stickers on their shrinkwrap. Europe generally doesn't shrinkwrap so if you're doing stickers, it's either the US or Japan.

I always peel off the price stickers, but you have to be careful not to make indentations into the lp sleeves/cd sleeves with your fingernails, or cause the skin of the sleeve to rip. I'm pretty good at it and I use Zippo lighter fluid and a knife to remove them.

If I buy a used cd with a great sticker on the jewel case but the case is really scratched up, I use a paint stripper gun to heat the jewel case up enough so that the sticker just comes right off, and I stick it on the new, perfect jewel case.

This makes me sound more neurotic than I really am.

 

[Stefan Krix]

Beau, I totally understand and second your behavior. I do also try to peel off the stickers if possible from the shrink wrap and put them back on the case....