MVS - why do people remove the serials?

[Bobbler]

Quick question, I have noticed that nearly all the MVS carts I got with my cab have had little bits cut out of the lables where the serial numbers should be.
I thought nothing of it until I started looking at ebay and noticed theres a lot of them on their with the serials cut out.

Is there any good reason for doing for this? Seems an odd thing to do.

[ChadTower]

They are bootlegs. 

[grantspain]

or stolen

[shess]

When operators bought the games originally I believe SNK linked the serials to them.  Therefore if the ops wanted to sell the games and not have them tracked back to them, they'd cut out the serials.  But before you buy any MVS game you should ask for pictures of the pcbs inside or a guarantee of authenticity...if it matters to you.  Bootlegs usually play just fine, but a semi serious collector won't buy them if you decide to resell them later.

Scott

[Bobbler]

Thanks for the info guys.
I have checked out my MVS carts and they all look to be originals inside, so must be like Scott said...

[eccs19]

I've got half a dozen MVS carts, and one of them (Puzzle Bobble) has no serial numbers, the rest do, and of course that is the only one that is a boot.  Apparently it's actually hard to get a non boot version of that game.  I don't care myself, it plays flawlessly.

[Ken Layton]

I sometimes have to destroy the label to open the cart to clean the edge connectors.

[ClubNinja]

I've also always gone by the tracking/reselling explaination.