Got around to listening to the podcast today, hearing my name still hasn't gotten old!
As for that Pikmin 2 in a NASCAR case, the guy running the sale told me about it. I had gladly paid his asking price of $2 for the N64 stuff, then asked if there was any other game stuff he might have around. He brought out a few GameCube and Xbox games, none of which were in their correct cases, so he went through each one to see what was actually in there. Sadly, it's too scratched to play, but perhaps I can bring it back with some toothpaste and/or Brasso. I don't recommend spending time making sure that each game case is what it says it is, unless it's one you want to buy in the first place.
As for the rest of the podcast, I think variant chat went on a little too long for me. Maybe it was just that it was so specific to our database here, rather than squabbling over what should and shouldn't be in here, it might have been interesting to hear what other collection communities do? I know it's the RF Generation Collectorcast, but NintendoAge got a mention earlier in the episode, how do they track these things there? That could have been interesting to know. Are we seen as the overly nitpicky crowd in the collecting scene, or given the other sites that do board variations, are we actually pretty lenient? I think answering some questions like this would have been a little more interesting than "Well what if I own the Xbox Dreamcast compilation..." that went around in circles a few times toward the end.