I'm sorry to say I can't leave any of the boxes unopened
! Even if I don't have room to display a particular set, I at least open it to inspect the contents, especially if it is something I bought MIB on eBay! The reason for this excessively paranoid behavior is due to digging a "MIB" 5721 fire department rescue raft set I purchased from an eBay seller out of a storage box for a picture story long after receiving it. The auction description stated that it was a MIB set still factory sealed, but the condition of the box had wear. When I received the box by USPS after the close of auction I never opened it to check anything due to trusting the sellers description & placed the box in a larger storage box until I decided to use it later. I decided to assemble it, & when I opened one end of the box, I found that the box had been reglued, & the contents had been previously assembled with the base of the FD flag broken off & still inserted inside the holder hole of the raft. Next I found the rope for the raft hand holds, & rescue rope both had excessive knots tied in them. The grey parts spree had all parts removed & the parts were secured in one of the original plastic bags inside of the box along with the broken flag, so no rattling of loose parts was detected. I went back & questioned the seller explaining the reason for delay in discovery of this problem to which they explained that they had purchased this set in a group of items from a big name toy store that were on clearance, & they were unaware of any of the sets being previously opened or used, in other words, too bad, so sad! Too much time had passed, & a good lesson was learned from this event, check everything!
