CIB is where most collectors actually live. It is the tier of the whole object — the game as it sat on a shelf in 1990, box and manual and media together — without the untouchable premium of a sealed copy. It is also the tier where the word 'complete' does the most work and hides the most disagreement, because the gap between genuinely complete and 'nearly complete' is priced far more sharply than newcomers expect.
Complete means every original component that shipped in the box is present: the box itself, the manual, the cartridge or disc, and all inserts. Inserts are the part people forget — registration cards, poster maps, dust sleeves, the styrofoam or plastic tray, the poly bag the manual came in. On some titles the complete set of paper is a dozen distinct pieces, and the market knows exactly which ones.
Within CIB, the box carries the value. Cardboard is fragile and fifty years old: corner crush, edge wear, seam splits, sun-fading, price-sticker scars, and writing all move the number. A crisp, square, unfaded box with sharp corners is a genuinely scarce thing for many titles, because most survivors were handled, stacked, and stored badly. Learn to read a box the way a book collector reads a dust jacket — the same square-corners-and-clean-edges discipline applies.
Manuals and inserts are not just completeness checkboxes — they carry print-run evidence. Manual revision codes, paper stock changes, and insert variants can date a copy to a specific production window, and a first-print box married to a first-print manual is worth more than a first-print box with a later manual swapped in. The completist's discipline is to verify the paper matches the box, not merely that paper is present.
For most collectors CIB is the rational tier: it delivers the whole artifact and the display value without the sealed premium or the reseal risk, and it rewards knowledge over budget. A patient CIB collector who reads boxes and verifies paper will out-collect a richer buyer who chases sealed copies without the eye for it. It is the tier where the hobby's craft matters most.