d_skin Protective Disc Skins

Growing up in the age of video game cartridges, you really didn't worry too much about damaging your game. Yes, you had to keep the cartridge contacts clean and I can remember the various cleaning kits that used to be on the market.

Then ushered in the age of video games being on compact discs. While this afforded many advantages when it came to the games, it also brought along new worries of your games being damaged easier.

Long before I ever heard of disc rot I was worried about scratching my discs to the point where the game would mess up or just not load all together. When I started down the road of importing games from Japan for my Sega Saturn for instance, I paid good money for some of the titles I still own in my library. While I'm generally really careful with my games, I was still worried about scratches and was looking for something to help me out.

I honestly don't remember where I first came across the company called d_skin (this was before social media was the norm), but they had a product that I thought was too good to be true. Protective Disc Skins, a piece of plastic that had a semi-rigid plastic edge that clipped onto your discs. If the protection was enough, d_skin claimed you could leave the skins attached to the disc while you played it in your DVD or game console. Was this true? I had to find out for myself.

The skins were sold in various quantities at most major retail stores. I only have a few so I'm guessing I must've bought a 5 pack when I first tried them out for myself. I really thought this product was too good to be true. I had to give it a try first hand for myself to see if they lived up to how they were advertised.

I don't know of all of the skins had a bright, neon orange edge to them or not. Upon taking the sleeve out of the packaging I thought it looked pretty cheap and fragile. The plastic in the center does appear to be thin and if not careful I would imagine would wrinkle pretty easy. There is a hole in the center that perfectly aligns with the center of the disc. The edges are about as thick as a CD and easily clip onto the edges of the disc. That's it. That's all they do...they clip onto your disc. 

Once attached to your disc, I have to say the skin looks pretty good. I would have preferred the edges being a differnet color...white, black or just clear...but the orange has grown on me. The skin comes off just as easy as it went on, but I don't see it just falling off the disc on it's own.

I've used these skins on both DVDs and games and in each case found zero issues. The DVD movie played fine in a few different players and the Saturn and PS2 games I tried played w/ the skin with no problems.

Truth be told I really forgot about this product. At the time I discovered them I didn't own many games that I deemed necessary to protect. Like I said early, I'm pretty careful with my stuff and just didn't see the need. However I recently came across some games in my library w/ these skins on and it got me to wondering if I should invest in more of these or something similar. I've added several pricey (import) games to my ever growing library that I would be devastated if something were to happen to them.

So, what's your take on this product? 1) have you ever seen them before? 2) If yes, how well did they work for you? If no, would you be up to using a product like this? I'm not sure if d_skin is even in business anymore. I could only find a few Amazon sellers that had this product in stock so I'm going to guess it didn't sell very well and has fallen to the wayside. Would you use something like this on your more expensive disc based games in your collection? Why or why not?