13 VHS Tapes That Are Now Worth a Small Fortune
Why the heck would anyone pay a small fortune for old VHS tapes, or 8 tracks, cassettes, 78 records or any other obsolete media?
What is the real purpose of the article linked above? Clickbait?
Collector’s thrive on nostalgia.
For instance McDonald’s happy meal toys from the 80’s are worth far more than a disposable item should be.
In general, collectors covet things that are rare – it doesn’t matter the utility. In fact flawed items (e.g. the inverted jenny stamp, or coins that were double struck) might be worth more because not many got released before the flaw was discovered and products recalled.
Most of the listed items are worth more because they were never opened – which there are presumably very few of.
Brian
In the case of Star Wars (1995), it’s one of the few ways you can get a legal copy of the original movie without all the new special effects or Greedo shooting first. Before streaming services, my CD of the soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian was worth more than $100 because it simply wasn’t being produced and it was hard to find. Some people are just collectors, and items that are both rare and desirable tend to demand higher prices.
There are some media which are only available on VHS and have never been re-released on CDs/DVDs, etc [I recall reading about this in respect to some old horror movies]. These can be more valuable.
Usually articles like these ARE clickbait because they only look at what the price of some current eBay listings are, and don’t take into account any actual sales. This article is sort of clickbait-y with the title, as they are suggesting YOUR old tapes are worth a FORTUNE but they do correctly point out within the text that it’s only if your tapes are sealed, and the fortune is up to $1000.
I can attest that you can make money off old VHS tapes, used or not. But not a FORTUNE. I got ahold of a cache of Disney tapes from a friend doing a home cleanout. Most of them were the 90s “clamshell” case animated movies, and they all sold for meager prices. A few of them were 80’s live action Disney movies and they sold for a LOT. I wish I could remember how much they sold for…it was well under $1000 but I don’t remember if it was over or under $100. I was surprised at how well they did, though.
They appraised a Darth Vader action figure for $6-9000 on Antiques Roadshow this week. The owner played with it when it was new in 1978, in other words, not in the package or mint by any means.
But there were still millions of those sold and they go for about $15 for the complete three-tape set on ebay. The fact that they have any value at all as opposed to “pay $1 + shipping so I don’t have to throw these away” is remarkable but it’s not “a fortune” by any means.
The new market in things like VHS is for “graded” copies of very early tapes - you send it in to a place like CGC and they verify it’s a “9.8” out of 10 and encase it in security plastic, just like they’ve been doing for comics and trading cards for some time. Even so, we’re talking mostly about runs from before the time when VHS was a consumer sales product, when tapes were just made for video rental stores and thus surviving copies in excellent condition are incredibly rare. As a rule of thumb - if it’s something you were able to buy for $20 in 1989 money at Kmart, it isn’t rare or valuable. This includes Disney tapes, which are the subject of a very “our modern condition” pump and dump scheme where auction site scammers keep buying “Black Diamond” tapes from themselves for thousands of dollars in an attempt to portray a rarity or demand that doesn’t exist and rope in Disney Adult types into paying real money.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
The surprising takeaway for me here was… MSN still exists. I think I just assumed it had fizzled away to nothing.
I don’t know that I agree with this. Mom has spent some time as an antique dealer. I have spent some time as a dealer of collectable toys. I have often found that the things that end up very valuable are in fact things that had a low price, that everybody owned, and that were almost entirely ruined by the owners.
OTTOMH There was a news story about the price an NES game brought at auction. It was the Super Mario/ Duck Hunt game that came with the system. BUT, this one was still factory sealed.
Word. Case in point: in 1981-2, kaylasmom recorded an (LP) album of Christian music with the songwriter who wrote Karen Carpenter’s Little Altar Boy. It was not a commercial success, or (AFAIK) released for brick-and-mortar retail sale.* But I just now googled her name and found two copies for sale. One is priced at $50, the other at 69 Euro.
*again, as far as I know. Howlett was not above screwing over his collaborators.
If it’s something you were able to buy at K-mart for $20 in 1989 that was sold as a collectible, it’s not rare or valuable. There was a craze, I think in the 90s for buying sports trading cards by the full boxed set. Everyone who bought those put them in the attic or wherever and saved them. Not worth much now. If it was something you bought in 1989 that people actually used and you saved it and it’s new in box, there 's a decent chance that it is worth something today. People were buying those boxed cards in the 90s because the older sports trading cards became valuable - but only because people traded them, they rubber-banded them , their mothers tossed them in the garbage when they got left behind and therefore , there were few left in good condition decades later.
Some stuff is valuable because it’s ephemera, meaning something that wasn’t treasured or valued or expected to survive for a long time. Postage stamps, gas station road maps, ticket stubs, menus are often disposed of quickly. At the very least, few examples are preserved in good quality.
Yep. I have made some good money selling rare VHS tapes I’ve picked up at thrift stores. Obscure and in some cases well-known horror and other genre movies have a strong collectors market in old media.
It used to be the only way to see some of these movies but in the last 10 years a lot of boutique DVD/Bluray distributors have popped up and have been releasing these kind of movies which has changed the market.
I decided to get out of being a tapehead because I didn’t need to get into ANOTHER thing.
The only value of old VHS tapes would be if they contained material that is currently unavailable. Unlike vinyl records, there isn’t even a theoretical argument that can be made for them if the same material is available on DVDs.
Some years ago I threw out hundreds of VHS tapes (though I admit that I still have at least a hundred Betamax tapes and a Betamax machine).
Anyway, I carefully retained my VHS player and one very special VHS tape. My son, who was an avid video gamer from an early age, appeared as a contestant on a kids’ video gaming program and won the championship! I was in the studio audience but my faithful VHS recorder back home taped the episode!
The trick is to have ones that are still sealed. I have several of the VHS tapes there in their original packaging, in good condition, and with all the stuff they packed still inside. But they’re opened, and I played them. That brings the price down significantly.
It’s like the difference between a 1960s comic book graded 7.0 and one graded 9.6. The difference is pretty much not at all obvious to someone who isn’t a grader (or a fanatic), but it’s the difference between a comic worth a few tens of dollars and one worth thousands.
I was lucky enough to get a Beta copy of Magic: The Gathering as a gift and kept it sealed, in its original packaging. It’s worth several thousand dollars that way.
I sold it at auction, years ago.
That reminds me of another class of high priced, collectible vintage items: electronic/cal music gear. Some old analog keyboards, guitars, amplifiers, microphones, drum machines, effects racks/pedals, etc command high prices today. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a tape loop delay (and requisite tapeheads) and expect to budget $500-1000 for a working one. I’ve also been lowkey looking for a portable sampling keyboard.
You mentioned 78 records.
I don’t collect those, but I collect Seeburg 1000 records. I have several hundred of them.
I love the players, I enjoy the music, it is unavailable anywhere except on the original media.
I buy them, rip them to MP3 on my good working Seeburg machine, file them away, and then load the MP3 files onto my modified Seeburg 1000 BMS machine that has a hidden Raspberry Pi configured as a jukebox.
So I’m one guy who is willing to pay more than $10 per record for old elevator music.
My late sister-in-law and her youngest daughter were really into Disney movies. So they had a bunch of them. Some still in the original wrapping. As her health declined we tried to suggest that those get sold on eBay but the SIL had no Internet or tech savvy. When she moved into a care home and later died, presumably the eldest sister who handled that stuff just dropped them off at Goodwill. And who knows if they were spotted by a collector.
Such a waste, but not our problem to deal with.
Re the clickbait crappy slideshow link in the OP. Hey, I actually have E.T. — on Beta! Per eBay, that might be worth up to $10. I’m rich I tells ya.
I checked the worth of my Blade Runner “Director’s Cut” on Beta. Not much sold. May be worth less than the original release on Beta. Strange.