Nostalgic for video stores yet?

[cjefferys]

Nice stuff mazinz! I love those old horror VHS tapes in the big boxes. Some are still worth big bucks these days. I've slimmed down my VHS collection over the years, but I still have a few boxes full of tapes that I stubbornly refuse to get rid of.

DVD turned everyone into video collectors, but back in the VHS days, only movie diehards like us actually put together a big collection of movies. I loved going to big video stores (the Video Factory chain in Buffalo, NY was my favourite) and browsing through the previously viewed sections. I loved chancing upon some weird obscure cult/horror/Euro-sleaze/Asian oddity on VHS.

And I'm very nostalgic for my favourite underground video store, Mondo Video in Buffalo, may it rest in peace. That place introduced me to so much Hong Kong, Japanese and European films and weird crap that I couldn't find anywhere else at the time (over 15 years ago).

[johnmiic]

Saloon doors or beads?

When West Coast Video was in business they had no door but a maze-like, mini-hallway, to conceal the room. Trouble was when you rounded that last corner-there was no telling what you'd find!

One disturbing thing was one Friday night a guy racked up a stack of adult films so tall that spanned the length of his arm as he carried them. Knowing those films had to be returned in 2 days I turned at my friend Mike and said, "See that guy renting all that porn for the weekend? Physically impossible in only 2 days. I hope he makes copies for himself"

[cjefferys]

Saloon doors or beads?

Oddly my town still has two adult video stores but only one regular video store, it perplexes me how they stay in business.

Heh, my parents' old video store had the requisite saloon doors. That is amazing that your town can still support two adult stores in this day and age, but the one next to the seniors' complex kind of makes sense...

[cjefferys]

One disturbing thing was one Friday night a guy racked up a stack of adult films so tall that spanned the length of his arm as he carried them. Knowing those films had to be returned in 2 days I turned at my friend Mike and said, "See that guy renting all that porn for the weekend? Physically impossible in only 2 days. I hope he makes copies for himself"

He was definitely making copies. We had customers like that too.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

Weird enough, I think all the big chains are dead here in town, but the last 6 months or so we've had a bunch of mom and pop style places open up.

Don C.

[Den82]

I miss that musty odor I'd smell as I browsed the horror section. In the early 2000s when they were either going out of business or making futile attempts switch over to DVD, I built a pretty big collection of horror VHS. It's a shame I did not have the money nor the foresight to buy them ALL out. Because some of those old horror VHS tapes are worth a LOT of dough and I got back into the not long ago.

But oddly enough, VHS is getting harder to find. It seems not even the flea market sellers are even bothering to try and sell them.

[Den82]

Had close to 1,000 at one time.

[garagesale]

Don't miss Blockbuster and their monopolies/late fees/know-nothing clerks/long lines/deception-as-business-model.

I do miss the few rare smaller stores that had a comic book store-type hangout atmosphere. Only knew of two my whole life, and their selection was somewhat lacking.

I was an early-adopter of the whole Netflix thing. Even figured out a way to watch the streaming content on my TV before that was available through Roku, et al.

JamesD

[Earth 2 Chris]

We still have a Movie Warehouse here in town, even though both Wal-Mart and McDonald's have Redbox machines. At one time we had 4 different video stores. I currently get my rentals for free from the library. Cindy works there and just brings them home.

When I was a kid, there was one store in town that had a nice selection of "not rated" movies. I had no business watching those, and the guy had no business letting me have them, but I still appreciate it. It scares me as a parent now though!!!

Chris

[domino]

Mazinz, great looking collection there. I too collect VHS. I am jealous, would love to get my hands on a copy of Nocturna or any of the old Meda releases.

Thanks for the heads up on the Nail Gun Massacre VHS/DVD combo and Sleeper, I didn't know about those. I bought the House of the Devil from Diabolik, and now I will have to get the other two as well.

[Splitty]

Had close to 1,000 at one time.

OMG you have Ben!! That puppy's hard to find. errr, I mean rat.

I love love love cheesy 80s horror or martial arts flicks. I try to only collect ones with no DVD release, but when I'm out G-saleing I have no way to check. Sadly all of our local actual VHS carrying stores have dropped off like flies.

I used to work at a cheap Video Store chain (that folded in a few years) in the 90s hey day. It was a golden age of fun. Us employees used to get into shenanigans, relentlessly made fun of customers behind their backs, and poked around in their renting history (good way to tell if someone was date-worthy). I almost feel bad.

I picked up some handy skills too! I can now completely take apart and splice VHS tapes. And take apart VCR's and extract tangled tapes.

I wish I could say that skill came in handy today.

[mazinz]

I miss that musty odor I'd smell as I browsed the horror section. In the early 2000s when they were either going out of business or making futile attempts switch over to DVD, I built a pretty big collection of horror VHS. It's a shame I did not have the money nor the foresight to buy them ALL out. Because some of those old horror VHS tapes are worth a LOT of dough and I got back into the not long ago.

But oddly enough, VHS is getting harder to find. It seems not even the flea market sellers are even bothering to try and sell them.

Nice collection you have there! What I have been noticing is sellers completely jack knifing the prices on most of these tapes, especially any cult titles that came in a big box. While just a few years back you could score most of them for under 30 (don't be afraid of the dark being one exception to that rule)

I too acquired most in these later years. The Mom and Pop store by me STILL has vhs on the shelf to rent and the owner gave me the key to the kingdom to buy whatever the hell I wanted and was given access to their no longer renting basement. I would honestly say I spent over $2000.00 within these last 3 years because he has been trying to close the store for just as long

Mazinz, great looking collection there. I too collect VHS. I am jealous, would love to get my hands on a copy of Nocturna or any of the old Meda releases.

Thanks for the heads up on the Nail Gun Massacre VHS/DVD combo and Sleeper, I didn't know about those. I bought the House of the Devil from Diabolik, and now I will have to get the other two as well.

You're welcome-- Oh about the Sleeper- the film is pretty bad and essentially a rip off of the 1970's Black Christmas. So if you do get the combo box be sure to WATCH the vhs version. The dvd version has a clean and polished film and it hurts the throw back feel they wanted to achieve. The vhs version was made with actual analog noise, color bleed, pan/scan etc and this in turn helped out the film tremendously. This version is not on the dvd

[cjefferys]

I used to work at a cheap Video Store chain (that folded in a few years) in the 90s hey day. It was a golden age of fun. Us employees used to get into shenanigans, relentlessly made fun of customers behind their backs, and poked around in their renting history (good way to tell if someone was date-worthy). I almost feel bad.

I picked up some handy skills too! I can now completely take apart and splice VHS tapes. And take apart VCR's and extract tangled tapes.

That sounds familiar. And yeah, we had to take apart plenty of tapes to repair them. We had a neat little video tape splicer that did a great job. With rental tapes costing us almost $100 each, we kept those tapes in circulation as long as we could, no matter how many times we had to splice them back together. And it was always fun when someone sheepishly brought in their whole VCR with the rental tape stuck inside. I got pretty good at taking VCRs apart to remove the stuck tapes.

[samurainoir]

I'll have to go through my VHS tapes in storage. I only got rid of my piles of taped off of LD or duped tapes recently as a compromise, but given that you did pay much more back n the day for VHS, than what most DVD's cost these days for what you assumed would be your lifetime movie collection, it is tough letting go. It'll be hard letting go of DVD soon as well.

One thing I had noticed last time checked, many of the oldest VHS tapes I owned were degraded in an alarming fashion anyways.

[Bruce Banner]

One thing I had noticed last time checked, many of the oldest VHS tapes I owned were degraded in an alarming fashion anyways.

Yeah, the degradation of VHS tapes is sadly inevitable.

With the passage of time, the magnetically encoded electronic information on a tape will deteriorate, and the magnetic iron particles will degrade and eventually rub off as a tape is played in a VCR.

Some recommend fast forwarding and rewinding your tapes periodically to maintain ideal tension and avoid build up of residue, while others recommend not doing that to avoid potentially stretching the tape.

There's a good article on magnetic tape maintenance here:
Ch35