For a long time, I was very big on hardcovers. And so were other people. While RPGs seemed to have started in boxes, they evolved into the more “sophisticated” hardcovers, with only some companies putting out “starter boxes”. The common pro-book arguement is, they are easy to store, they fit in your bookshelves (well, most of them), they are durable, and you got it all-in-one.
But when I look at some of my most useful RP purchases, most of those came in boxes. And this is not due to rose-tinted glasses, since usually, the boxed games came with better extras like maps. More recent hardcovers releases tend to have this nasty habbit of tear-em-out-maps that are often printed on the same paper as the book. While in this age of cheap printers and web support, one hardly needs a staple of character sheeds anymore, and you can easily pick up dice in game shops or online stores, often certain games can really profit from little thingies like cards, special tables, etc. Also, I used the boxes to store my campaign notes and my current notes, I STILL put in my 20 year old boxes.
(Here’s a funny sidenote: In Germany, the 3rd Edition D&D in its first licensed run by Amigo came as a hardcover in a box, since during the 90s and early 2000s, german retailers would not pick up a game that did not come a box.)

But what I actually wanted to say – you know how they put out those special editions of certain games, with fake leather (or even actual leather) covers? And how you can purchase steel books instead of plastic case DVDs/BluRays?
So… since boxes seem to reappear (the new Classic Battletech box, the Warhammer 3rd Edition by Fantasy Flight, etc) – would YOU buy a ‘collector’s edition’ boxed game, that comes in, say, a wodden box or even a roleplaying-book-sized steel book-type box?
I wonder if we will see something like that – though I doubt it would sell very well, RPGs being more of a niche product to boot.