What makes something valuable

December 30, 2022 11:18 AM

Red Letter Media takes a look at the growing trend of VHS collecting, which has created an entirely new market for professional VHS grading: We Finally Watched Nukie: The VHS Grading Video
posted by Pendragon (30 comments total)

A lot of the millennial folks I work with collect VHS tapes.

They're nostalgic for someone who grew up with them, they're a physical object, so no streaming service will suddenly pull for no good reason. There are still a lot of cheap ones out there. Much like vinyl records, when they wear out it's usually in a way that's almost charming, with tracking issues and glitching and whatnot, as opposed to a scratched DVD (or LaserDisc, for that matter), which does not.

I can absolutely see the appeal.
posted by box at 11:39 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

A lot of the millennial folks I work with collect VHS tapes.

My child does this. Yes; for them it's the appeal of physical objects, and the rituals associated with the play and care of them. Electronic devices do not offer those rituals.

It's also super cool to buy gifts for them. You can get massive joy for small investments. My big win this season was finding a copy of the movie "Alice's Restaurant" on VHS for them. They didn't even know it existed. I love the VHS-loving people.
posted by Silvery Fish at 12:06 PM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

for them it's the appeal of physical objects, and the rituals associated with the play and care of them.

I think RLM is mainly talking about collectors who buy sealed tapes and never unseal them.
posted by Pendragon at 12:24 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I recently discovered a sealed VHS copy of the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. The tape had been stored in a VHS tape cabinet in Arizona, and it was in perfect condition. I believe that my mom bought it at a discount or clearance store for $3.00.

My brother sold it (ungraded) on eBay for $300. The only way it could have been more valuable is if the tape had the Pizza Hut promotional sticker on the shrink wrap. He did split the money with Mom.
posted by JDC8 at 12:24 PM on December 30, 2022 [13 favorites]

Non-Fungible Tapes
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:41 PM on December 30, 2022 [11 favorites]

Non-Fungible Tapes

Pretty sure they funged the shit out of all them extra Nukie tapes.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:54 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

RLM can be very hit-or-miss. For me it's mostly hit but I can see how they can be off-putting. But this is video is not like most of their other videos, that's why I posted it.
posted by Pendragon at 1:05 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Maybe I should raid my mother-in-law's place; she collected Disney VHS tapes for a very long time, expecting to hand them to a grandkid. By the time we actually HAD a kid, VHS was dead and BluRay was the new hotness. So those tapes really must be in very good condition; they've maybe been played half a dozen times at most.

Silvery Fish: "My big win this season was finding a copy of the movie "Alice's Restaurant" on VHS for them."

Huh. Have never seen the movie. I do have the album on vinyl though (it was my dad's, before I liberated it). I make my kid listen to it every Thanksgiving. He rolls his eyes but enjoys it nonetheless.
posted by caution live frogs at 1:26 PM on December 30, 2022

I guess I don’t really care for these guys’ style (is this the same people as “Star Wars prequel criticism from a guy pretending to be a serial killer”?) and I know it’s a little crazy but I don’t feel great about seeing all those copies of Nukie destroyed, even as I have to acknowledge that it’s pretty satisfying to put a VHS tape through a woodchipper. We’re going to have anew era of lost movies, and they will mostly be terrible movies, but that doesn’t make me like it more.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:22 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

The big problem is that no one's making VCRs anymore.
Back in 2010 or 2011, even, when my 90's-bought VCR stopped working, it was the magnetic head no longer working. When I brought it to Minas Electronics on North Clark, they pointed out they couldn't fix it, because no one was making the replacement heads. (I should have bought replacement machines at the time.)
I mean, I keep hoping hipsters will adopt VHS in enough numbers to get production going again, but....
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 2:39 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Related (from 2016): Chicago video collective says it's amassed 12K 'Jerry Maguire' tapes
posted by chimpsonfilm at 2:44 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Nukie.

An evening of my life made passable only by large amounts of Vicodin. In fact, the friend who insisted we watch it was also the one who supplied the drugs. I considered that only fair.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 2:55 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Finally, my collection of 115 tapes comes of age!
Love it!
And the Used Stuff Stores (Good Will & Salvation Army) out here in MT are awash in VHS tapes! Especially Disney for kids.
posted by Mesaverdian at 3:01 PM on December 30, 2022

I just started watching the video, but just in case, here's another video about a similar phenomenon in the retro video games market: Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION In The Retro Video Game Market (I'm pretty sure I encountered this video on here, but I can't find the FPP...)
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 4:11 PM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

"Nukie! Nukie!"

I want that as a ringtone.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:15 PM on December 30, 2022

Dragonslayer and Excalibur still in the wrap.

asking 34 bands each.
posted by clavdivs at 4:40 PM on December 30, 2022

A gal I went to high school has a Twitch channel where she watches found VHS tapes.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:13 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I didn't know that this market existed. I mean, I knew that people collected VHS tapes – but I didn't know about the "professional" grading, or the insane prices.

Collecting things that one never intends to use has always perplexed me.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:17 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

There's something really real and human about the popular delusion that the totems of one's childhood are so important and meaningful that they will someday be worth lots of money, and it seems like every generation gets its own version of it. It's kind of sweet.

But the only way that people can will that delusion into reality is to let capitalism muscle its way in, and it inevitably makes everything crass and tacky, like collector car auctions, or sports memorabilia stores, or Pokemon cards and videotapes in little Plexiglass vitrines.

I'm not sure I have a point here, but if you're shopping for used VCRs, keep an eye out for Panasonic's PV series. They're pretty durable, and they made thousands of them, well into the 2000s.
posted by box at 6:49 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

If people want physical media, Blu-ray is right there, and it doesn't look like dog shit smeared on a piece of glass.
posted by rhymedirective at 8:08 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

Hot take by me, an old millennial who grew up on VHS: VHS is a weak medium, whyyyy

Me after reading this thread: alright I'll keep my eye out at goodwill.
posted by CPAnarchist at 8:19 AM on December 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

If people want physical media, Blu-ray is right there, and it doesn't look like dog shit smeared on a piece of glass.

Or LaserDisc
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:35 AM on December 31, 2022

I think I get it, though not at all enough to go through the hassle of acquiring a vhs player. I remember when CDs and DVDs came out and how much they felt like the future - the sleekness, the uncanny shimmer of the discs themselves, the cold, glitchy failures when they did go wrong after insufficient care. By contrast vhs tapes are so chunky and clunky, with much more interesting failure modes like warping, warbly sound, weird colours. By comparison now they have an almost alternate universe sci-fi feel, like the wheezing clunkiness of a Voight Kampf machine or the chunky control panels of the Nostromo.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:05 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

(I love RLM)
posted by SoberHighland at 12:02 PM on December 31, 2022

Holy smokes. The Ebay listing is now almost $76,000.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:42 PM on December 31, 2022

I sort of wish this were a fundraiser with everyone giving a bit instead of one person getting stuck with the full bill

Then run the tape through a woodchipper and dole out the pieces according to the amount contributed?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:22 PM on December 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

If anyone wants to chat about the absolute corruption of non-profits, foundations and fundraisers, I'm on a real tear about that. And I trust Mefites.
posted by lextex at 7:26 AM on January 1, 2023

A little late to this thread, but the VHS collection trend hasn't caught on in Tucson, AZ, much. We go estate sale-ing on weekends, and most of the companies price VHS either like 8/$1 or free.
Now the vinyl market is hoping, I see several dedicated vinyl collectors (resalers? who knows, haven't chatted them up) every weekend. I'm a bit whistful for all the vinyls I got at Savers for pennies in the early 2000s that I solely used to decorate my room with. I had almost the complete collection of ELO albums, plus other 70s and 80s rock. Besides just wishing I had to play them, there are like 5 vinyl stores in town that would buy them off me.
posted by lizjohn at 3:03 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I like that their whole premise is to make the obscure tape valuable and they outline the various ways that they are going about it...

...and it seems to be working considering that the bidding is up to $80,400 right now.
posted by Hicksu at 9:19 PM on January 3, 2023

Actually Watching Nukie.
posted by Pendragon at 7:35 AM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]