Disney VHS/Video Collectors have lost their minds...

[samurainoir]

Oh, and your favorite Ed...Original Kung Fu flicks like ORIGINAL Shaw Brothers release tapes...$$$$$$

This came up in conversation recently when we were all out at a big screen Kung Fu Friday outing at the Royal. One of the joys we've been re-experiencing is watching the dubbed 35mm prints... something that I had completely forgotten about within the cinematic "purity" of my 90s/early 2000s Shaw Bros. import DVD collection, which are all cantonese/mandarin/subbed.

What a joy it was to once again hear those same handful of voices that did the English dubbing in pretty much EVERY kung fu film back in the day.

My understanding is that only a small amount of the hundreds of dubbed versions from the Shaw library that were screened in grind houses, and that we watched on Saturday afternoon TV, ever made it to a wide-release DVD/Bluray/Digital format?

[jwyblejr]

Use to be able to walk into any flea market and find a copy. Same with thrift stores. That's another reason this makes no sense.

[Earth 2 Chris]

I remember when these were going for decent money after they were out of print, and the movies were back in "the Disney Vault". That even carried over into the DVD era, before Disney got around to releasing that particular title in that format.

But we've donated every VHS copy we had to the local library. And here we could have bought a new house off of them!

Chris

[mazinz]

I don't...but I do sell VHS Tapes on Ebay. For the most part, about 80% of the time, they are out of print stuff you can't find on DVD. I just hate it when collectors don't do the research. This one is glaring because there are soooooo many of them out there. Even if half of them were destroyed in a warehouse fire...there'd still be millions left. Bottom line is that it aint rare or hard to find.

In many vhs tape circles the beauty and the beast phenomenon is a huge running "in" joke. Very few people bother to research anything. More power to you if you can actually get money for something like that. Other tapes do have legitimate value to them for a number of reasons

One factor about "rarity" of VHS... what is the shelf life of magnetic tape? How many tapes can survive continued rewatching? I would doubt that any that were in rental circulation back in the day survived very well today (and remember, there was a time when practically ALL VHS tapes were rental priced rather than him purchase priced)

I remember this was a huge question brought about when archives of 50's-70's reel to reel magnetic video tape archives in TV stations or educational institutions were shown to be degrading badly by the late 80's and 90's... depending on all kinds of factors. Temperature, handling. etc.

Don't knock them entirely. Many of them do still play well and I am talking about ex rentals . Many of us still have vhs and beta tapes halfway to 40 years old that still look decent. Quite a number of factors really. My oldest tape might be the 1979 nocturna on the meda label. Ex rental, I know the store where it came from and was surprised on how well it played, while a copy of the film city limits I picked up in the early 90's played terribly. Vcr quality also plays a role in the overall scheme of things

It is also a ticking time bomb as well. Another 20 years from now will many of these tapes still exist or crumble away? Could you find a decent working vcr in another 20 years? Honestly it's hard to tell, but digital preservation of many of these tapes is a priority. Likewise if you can get your vhs and beta decks restored ( which I have) now they may last another 13-20 years should you need it down the road

[johnnystorm]

This story was just run (inaccuratly of course) in our local paper, as well as spread on facebook by everyone.
So here is my $12,000 mint in sealed package copy of Beauty & the Beast ebay listing. Never opened, still has the store pricing on it....$19.99!
Let's see if I make that on it.
If it hits the 12K mark I'll be shopping in the Marketplace fyi!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Walt-Disney-BEAUTY-THE-BEAST-BLACK-DIAMOND-CLASSIC-Mint-Sealed-New-Clamshell-/361587316102?ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

[cjefferys]

I remember when the OOP clamshell Disney movies would go for big bucks back in the 90's, things like the Little Mermaid VHS with it's original "penis cover" would sell for a couple hundred. I remember combing video stores for rare VHS to sell on ebay back nearly twenty years ago!

I think the people buying stuff like big box horror titles on VHS are doing so mostly for the boxes themselves, so the condition of the VHS cassette itself is not much of a concern to them.

[toys2cool]

ha ha I remember looking for the ewok adventure 1 & 2 on vhs..always sold for $50+ each

[Blue Meanie]

This story was just run (inaccuratly of course) in our local paper, as well as spread on facebook by everyone.
So here is my $12,000 mint in sealed package copy of Beauty & the Beast ebay listing. Never opened, still has the store pricing on it....$19.99!
Let's see if I make that on it.
If it hits the 12K mark I'll be shopping in the Marketplace fyi!


https://www.ebay.com/itm/Walt-Disney...e=STRK:MESE:IT

I bet you get somewhere between $35 - $50 for it. How many people watching it so far?

[johnnystorm]

ZERO.

[Brue]

i recently dropped my vhs beauty and the beast at salvation army. -opportunity lost?

[mazinz]

i recently dropped my vhs beauty and the beast at salvation army. -opportunity lost?

Not really. It will now share some wonderful space with the 12,000 copies of Jeremy McGuire and Titanic that still plagues most of the Goodwill/Salvation Army shelves

I remember when the OOP clamshell Disney movies would go for big bucks back in the 90's, things like the Little Mermaid VHS with it's original "penis cover" would sell for a couple hundred. I remember combing video stores for rare VHS to sell on ebay back nearly twenty years ago!

I think the people buying stuff like big box horror titles on VHS are doing so mostly for the boxes themselves, so the condition of the VHS cassette itself is not much of a concern to them.

I liked the early 90's because you could still find many rare films and big box galore for decent human pricing. Actually you could still find many like that on ebay up until the sort of mid 2000's. That is when things started taking a turn many "then" common items just stopped showing up entirely (big box of Don't be Afraid of the Dark comes to mind. Always up on ebay and then one day it just kind of stopped showing up). Not too long after that the "vhs collector" boom exploded a bit more in terms of main stream popularity and now we tapes that should normally sell for lets say $30.00 going for over $80.00 and up

[johnnystorm]

Well, the auction ended a little while ago, and it sold. Fell a tiny bit short of the mythical 12k....about $11,990.00 short.

I'm calling it. MYTH BUSTED!

My new theory is this story is being spread by the folks at Goodwill in an attempt to unload those shelves of old vhs tapes.

[Blue Meanie]

After the Meet I'll probably be listing a few copies of Beauty and The Beast. Here's my theory on getting better prices on auctions in general:

1) Buy It Now or Best offers...there's no disappointment with the end result will be and buyers tend to like to go back and forth if the REALLY want something.

2) Never start an auction on a weekend and never let it end on a weekend especially during the late spring or summer months. Weekends are usually family time and a lot of Ebay buyers tend to forget that auctions are ending.

3) If you do list an auction style...list it so that you can get both east costers and west coasters in on the action. If you list during the week...time your auction to go off at after 6PM Pacific Time. You can schedule auctions when listing them on ebay.

Probably going to list a few Sealed Disney's the week of the 20th.