As a VHS collector, and an avid user on /r/VHS, Let me say this. Only a few of us actually believed this was a graded thing and we knew it was a collectors estate issue from the actor who played Biff. None of us are buying in to the Disney Black Diamond shit and graded sealed tapes are a joke in our community. Basically, 80's horror movies are our passion and that's truly causing an influx in our hobby. However, we're still getting tapes less than $100, and generally complain when we have to pay $30 a tape for a rare 80's horror movie. Songs of the South non-repros will cost you a bit, but because that's the only real Disney tape that's worth any money, but there's plenty of repros out there that you can get for +$30. Honestly, the most expensive tapes are sealed blanks to copy newer movies on to VHS that we can create box art for. If there's a market for anything VHS, it goes in this order: VHS tapes of 90's toons with commercials, 80's horror, and then solid blank tapes.

I just started collecting old sealed WWF VHS tapes, but I have no desire to get them graded. These are just mainly for me to sit and stare at for my own enjoyment.

There was an old episode of Pawn Stars where a guy tried to sell Sammy Davis, Jr.‘s VHS collection. They didn’t want it.

I can see sealed movies where there are no releases on DVD or Blu-Ray being valuable but that’s about it…

This is for people who missed out on all the other get rich quick schemes. God know what’s next. Graded cans of soda?

I remember VHS fondly, but the memories I have are recording MST3K and other movies to a blank VHS.

I’m an avid VHS collector but one of the biggest appeals is they tend to be nice and cheap with the exception of new releases, and even then they’re usually reasonably priced. Finding sealed tapes is fun but unless it has legit sentimental value I won’t spend much on it

VHS is my main as a collector. Seeing a lot of new people showing up in the tape groups on Facebook trying to sell their common tapes that are worth $.50 for hundreds if not thousands and seeing them get destroyed in the comments is pretty fun.

What I see a lot of people not getting is what most VHS collectors actually value. The highest value tapes I know of are cult/horror movies that were shot on video and independently released. Titles like star wars and Ghostbusters etc are common and worthless sealed or otherwise

Pat comparing movie theater quality to VHS is like comparing an NES game to the arcade version of the same game they’re just not comparable.

Dear God no. Enjoy your childhood again by removing the exact thing you used to do back then! I remember going to the video store, renting a video game and a movie, getting home and just staring at both on my shelf. The feels!

Annnnd people forget when a movie was a new release, unlike video games, there were walls full of said movie at the store. They made milllllllions of the heavy hitters. Its not like the one copy of a Saturn game that never got rented and now is worth a fortune.

Not sure I understand why the fact that Tom Wilson owned this copy for a time makes it more valuable? Is it signed by him? Does it come with some COA that says he owned it for a period of time? Kinda strange. Kinda like George Costanza buying what he thought to be John Voight's car.

It's crazy what people will waste their money on. Sealed VHS tapes? Really? Might as well just throw your money in the garbage.

I’m so glad I did the bulk of my VHS and Laserdisc (that’s next I guarantee) collecting years ago. This is gonna turn into people dumping their life savings into “the original Star Wars Episode 4” on VHS. There are actual rare releases of cult movies and “rental” vhs tapes that go for maybe $100. Market is gonna get real stupid real fast

I collect japanese VHD movies (movies on vinyl) they're pretty neat!

Awe c'mon man! I love buying vhs, they're cheap and easy to find. Making them expensive is going to wreck them for me. I just got a copy of back to the future for .33 at the thrift store.

Years ago there were articles about the ~super rare and valuable~ "black diamond" version of Beauty and the Beast that people were trying to hawk for thousands of dollars, despite nobody actually bidding on them. People are still trying apparently. I picked up a sealed one at the thrift store last year, just for the novelty. Maybe I can actually trick some rich guy into giving me a lot of money for it now...

Basically collectors of something that nobody touches with a barge pole anymore decides they need to create a market and suddenly give their collection value. It will be music cassettes or DVDs next !

Typical, just as last summer I threw away dozens of VHS films as they didn't sell for pennies at bootsale and charity shop wouldn't accept them. Oh well

Having my several hi-8 tapes become white noise after returning from a particular combat zone was odd. Trend won’t last. Archival media is that for a reason

I got back into VHS around 2009. I do prefer watching 80s and 90s movies on VHS as opposed to DVD or Blu-Ray. Plus, you get the original trailers.

I somehow was able to rent the VHS tape "Nail Gun Massacre" as a kid. I've looked for the tape online and it seems quite rare and valuable. You're right about VHS though,, very few redeeming qualities.

I will say this about VHS, I think there is a unique experience to be had with them when it comes to 80's horror movies. That grainy, low res image does a lot for setting a mood and covering up the rough edges that are plain to see in a 4k transfer. For instance The Thing on VHS is my favorite way to watch that movie. The already incredible practical effects just look more convincing when the image is grainy and ugly.

As someone who dabbles a bit in VHS collecting, I just like the experience. However, that guy is full of bologna, unlike video games everyone I know who collects VHS does it for the nostalgia/the fact that the movies are much cheaper to obtain usually. Literally no one cares about sealed VHS tapes in the tape market (though you can to a lesser extent make that statement about game collectors too; I don't count the "investors" as collectors) I do think, however, that if they do get inflated like games, it's gonna come down crashing almost instantly because there's so many other methods to watch the movies [in better quality] But anything to get these tabloid sites clicks, gotta hype up [common] pieces of media dragging in large sums of money

The reason I collect old video games is that many of them aren't available on later generation consoles. That's not the case with VHS.

Not necessarily, there’s plenty of laundering involved just like the Disney black diamond vhs.

Whatever people are willing to pay for it is what it's worth. It's mostly a rarity thing... "I have it and you don't"

Another knock against VHS is that most are cropped to fit a 4:3 screen so you’re not getting the actual movie as it was intended to be seen. Unless you get a widescreen version which aren’t as common & weren’t made for every film scenery and characters are gonna be cut out of the frame. Even with a widescreen version you have a much smaller viewing area.

The writing on the wall: you went from finding tapes for 4 or 5/$1.00 at a thrift store to them being a buck each and Disney tapes were $1.99. They have warehouses full of these fuckin things, plenty SEALED. Another cash grab ruins a fun hobby.

The vhs dna guy seems very sketchy to me. He did a tour of his personal collection and he had tons of copies of the same movies Sealed. I’ve never seen a collector that had over ten sealed star wars ghostbusters and back to the future in their personal collection.

VHS is the perfect sealed, wallhanger collectable. Because you'd never want to play the tape, it's purely a collectable object.

I collect sealed bills from buying VHS tapes at Walmart.

-A sealed copy of Star Wars, advertised as a 1st edition, sold for around $60k through Goldin auctions this past February. Two other Star Wars tapes sold for around the same price since December through Goldin, coincidentally. All 3 were graded by VHSDNA, which is the company owned by Cole "Mr. VHS", who has a direct relationship with Goldin (that video referenced is hosted on the Goldin KZfaq channel). Crucially, at least 1 of those Star Wars "1st editions" is actually a 2nd edition.

I collect vhs. You can get ‘em cheap especially SEEEEAAAAAALED

As for the experience...I remember on the VHS of Nightmare on Elmstreet you can see the damn mattress Freddy falls on toward the end when he's pulled out of the dream and falls down the stairs 😂. Thanks 4:3

I can imagine there being a pretty healthy market for stuff that may have only been released on VHS or where very specific versions of the films were released on VHS only. I'm thinking maybe some early 80s anime stuff that came over but was never re-released. The big one that comes to mind is The Last Unicorn, which had a DVD release, but that version had altered voice over in places and some language was muted. I don't know the status of it now, but rights issues prevented it from being released on a different format in its original version, so the only way to see it was on VHS. The Star Wars trilogy is similar deal, although I think the best official version of those films for home release was on laserdisc. But that all comes down to genuine rarity and oddity. Seeing blockbuster films go for a bunch on money on VHS is ridiculous, and I doubt it will ever get as crazy as games because most movies are available digitally and infinitely easier to play. If a video has been digitized, there's a way to play it. That's less true of many games.

Was hoping you guys would do a video on this. Alarm bells set off when I heard Heritage auctions were behind it. These are huge sums for VHS videos, yet how do we know there aren't hundreds of these things out there already?

Finding a working VHS player is harder than finding sealed tapes. I bought 6 used VCRs before finding a working unit to convert some home movies to digital for my Grandmother.

I reccomend Analog Archivist's videos on this topic. As the owner of the VHS-Collector website he is a real authority on this subject.

The genuinely rare VHS tapes are too rare to support a large collector's market, so they had to figure out a way to make the common sealed sell-through tapes appear to be rare. It's such a transparent scam. Anyone who collects VHS knows these sealed tapes of mainstream movies are common as dirt.

A copy of Halloween II sold last year in ebay for something over 25K. Everyone in horror collector groups I'm in on FB don't understand it and believed that auction was some sort of fraud/money laundering.

as someone who still occasionally buys and opens SEAAALLLED laserdiscs (sometimes up to 40 years old) for next to nothing, it’s funny to me to see people losing their mind (and bank accounts) over these super common sealed retail VHS tape. Every single one of these is a well-known movie that has been made obsolete by a better looking dvd at least 20 years ago. Then blu ray. And then probably even 4K. Who wants to go back to watch these? It’s not like they have rare content that never made the jump to another format (mostly what I buy on LD - there is a LOT of it) and it’s not like it’s somehow the best possible way to watch a classic either (surprisingly, still the case for a lot of LDs) so exactly what is the appeal here? There is alot of neat stuff on VHS that never came out any other way, so sure, collect that. But. You really need some random 1980’s release of Jaws? What exactly does that represent?

Does it really matter what is inside the box as long as it's sealed? It's never gonna be opened anyway, so if it has a big name like Back to the Future attached to it, it doesn't really matter if it's a game, vhs, dvd, etc.

CJ - *"Awww, shit, here we go again."*

Friend's family owned a video store. He gave me a sealed "Return of the Living Dead" tonight.

I understand the enjoyment of a lot of forms of collecting and I get the nostalgia factor with VHS. But it is a format that has not only been superceded a long time ago by a much better format (DVD) and also that superceding format has become almost as cheap as VHS. Collecting sealed VHS seems to be primarily about the seal itself and not about what is on the tape. Or it is a bit like NFT's where the rarity of the item is what decides the value and not the item itself. Somewhat bewildering stuff.

It's interesting to see these collecting things birth in real time, 10 years from now the narrative will be that VHS was ALWAYS the best and we were all idiots to abandon our VHS tapes for DVDs. The exact same thing happened with Vinyl, and you can say many of the same things that they say about VHS here for Vinyl... i'm going to duck for cover now.

I bought a sealed copy of Hudson Hawk, I'll never open it I just sit and stare and imagine what it would have been like to waste my time watching it at home.

this same thing happenned when I was a little boy with stamp collecting... and comic books....

That is a whole lot of criticism coming from two grown men, old millennials and super dorks surrounded in a room full of toys. As someone who grew up with VHS, I can completely understand Why VHS is starting to take off makes perfect sense.

When I was going to blockbuster in the mid 90s, I was renting a ton of VHS tapes (horror stuff). I bought all the F13s, Halloweens on tape etc. About 5 or 6 years ago, I sold them all to someone who was a VG collector. Nothing I had was worth anything so I got 5 bucks a tape. Used that money to buy a Kid Dracula for GB.

I mentioned this months ago! I have sold some sealed VHS for prices that I couldn’t understand.

before you know it - someone will take one onto Pawn Stars

The reason you want a VHS slabbed is because the cellophane degrades over time. If you lock it in plastic, the seal stops degrading

I disagree that VHS was garbage. In the early 90's, I had a JVC Super VHS that had fantastic audio/video quality. It had a great jog dial and S-Video. I ended up using it until around 99 when it broke. I didn't have it fixed. Instead bought an early DVD player. But honestly, early DVD didn't seem like that big of an upgrade to me beyond the extra features that DVDs had (instant chapter access, etc.).

This is silly lol. What's next, sealed biodegradable boxes with lenticular cards and metal coins in them, but no games?

Ill be sitting this one out. I just inherited boxes of vhs tapes, just ended up giving them away. Pretty sure there was no sealed ones anyways. I think if i had the room for it i might have set up a shelf for the heck of it but i would never watch any of them anyways

I remember when VHS tapes were 50-100 $ if you wanted it. I ran my Terminator and T2 until they broke lol

The awful quality of the VHS tape’s is part of charm. It’s how I remember watching them, and some movies like “Blair Witch Project” looks better on VHS with the “Lost Footage” feel being grainy and not cleaned up for 4k. Also some movies have never had a DVD/Blu-ray release so VHS is the only way to get them. Unless someone takes the time to create one ☝️ then it’s bootleg quality and looks just as bad just on DVD now. If I want to see a movie like “Star Wars” in it’s original release and not tampered with with the CGI effects this is the only way I can do that. But mostly I collect for the nostalgia of it. It has it’s charm and I enjoy it.

The only real value of VHS was in its utility as a recording format. VCR stands for Video Cassette Recorder, not Video Cassette Player. Prepackaged home video on VHS only became a thing and made any business sense after every household had a VCR. It was never any good on its own merit as a product, either for video quality (lol) or the user experience (the hassle of rewind/seek, tape jams, wear, etc). I was so, so very ready to leave magnetic tape behind once optical media became adopted. Can't say I'm surprised that there's a niche for anything, though.

Next up: sealed cassette tapes :)

I don’t care about sealed VHS. I collect all formats of movies and with VHS I usually get the movies I grew up renting all the time and some of the great horror movies with the good artwork on them.

The only reason this would become collectible for me would be VHS of movies that were never released afterward in any format (dvd, bluray or streaming)

2022: Sealed VHS tapes 2023: Sealed 8track tapes

8-Tracks, the next 'manufactured collectable'. Buy 'em now at goodwill for $0.88.

What I've noticed on sealed vhs tapes is that the continually shrinking shrink wrap doesn't damage the box much because the tape is the full size of the box and provides structure. What usually happens is that the shrink wrap usually just splits open after time.

I'm a movie collector, some DVD and mostly blu-ray. It's sad to see this come to my hobby.

I collect VHS seriously because of the nostalgic factor and not for the monetary value. I grew up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when VHS was still a thing and slowly died out by 2003. It’s what got me into retro media from an early age.

The question is whether this will bubble up to the point where people think opened or even loose VHS tapes have value. It sounds silly, but I never bet against people's ability to overvalue things. If it does happen, I'll be happy to sell the ones I still have and curse myself for all the ones I've thrown out over the years. Conceptually, I do think physical media is worth preserving as not everything is available on streaming and there's no guarantee that what is available will stay up forever in an unaltered form, but VHS just isn't the best format for most titles.

Sounds like it's folks who collected a bunch of "stuff" and need space, so they're trying to get top dollar. I have a ton of CDs I'd like to get rid of myself for space and I admit it's hard for me to just trash them or their jewel cases. I'd really like to get *something*, even a buck, because of how hard I find it to dump them.

The last time I played an old VHS... it was a white blur. Tapes just demagnetise. You get similar problems with old floppy disks if you're a retro computer collector.

I have a few VHS, mostly anime, and my most treasured is my copy of Star Wars (pre-A New Hope) from my childhood, the CBS Video version. It was the one VHS tape from my family collection I asked my dad to let me take when I moved because I didn't want it getting thrown out.

I heard about the $75K tape on the radio, but they never mentioned it was owned by an actor. Pat is right; VHS never had great video quality. The audio could be good, but the video was crap. TV networks never used it because of that.

Late to the comments. I used to have a copy of Titanic on vhs. Duel cassette version, first print run, seal was clean and not to many scratches. I just wanted to hold on to it for a shelf piece. When I was married (12 years ago) my ex wife let the neighbors have it cuase the didn't have a DVD player. I was at work and could stop her. Oh well. Rhere goes half a million....

I'd be curious to know if Tom decided to sell of his own accord or if someone approached him. Maybe that's covered in one of the articles, but I only read through one of them.

Wrong- there has always been a huge collectors community for vhs collecting- and yes most do know the difference between what’s collectible and what’s not- it’s the same shit as nes games- a lot of trash and some good tapes that are hard to get- vcr are hard to find especially ones that work-

Video game collecting is an established hobby with a known market, which is why graded games had an opportunity. VHS tapes do not have this foundation to build off of. (i.e. I don't see VHS collector stores/conventions/websites, but gaming has that market in a large capacity)

Aaaahhh the snobbery continues smh

BETA losing had nothing directly to do with adult entertainment. BETA allowed P**n content to be made. VHS beat it because it was more cost effective. It was cheaper and thus more profitable option for the film distributors. This was amplified by the fact that because weight and size VHS player units were cheaper to ship, thus slowly evermore tipping the scales.

in sweden theres been a market and a collecting community for swedish rental vhs tapes for more than 10-20 years. it has grown bigger and more expensive in the past 5 years though. but here we never collect the tapes you could buy in the stores. we only go for the bigger clamshell rentals :D its mostly about the earlier tapes, from the 70's and up to around 85, but nowadays even later tapes up to the early 90's even go for at least some money. i never think it will move beyond rentals in sweden though.

Dang Ian. That hurts. I could care less about VHS and cassette tapes but I still collect DVDs when I see a good one.

I used to work at a pawn shop , we sold vhs for 50 cents

Just wait for Gamestop to try make a buck off this in someway.

I think the visual aesthetic of VHS has a large role in some people's nostalgia for the content of the tapes. The retro TV commercial marathons you do are rich with nostalgia due in no small part to the smearing, tearing, tracking, an audio glitches inherent to VHS tapes. No way to know for sure, but I'd bet if the only way to watch such commercials were with HD remasters they wouldn't be as popular.

These never actually sold for those prices. Schill bidders and totally staged for money off of speculators and rubes. It is worse than the graded game and toy market. Right again here boys. Good job

The only movies that I could see being worth tracking down a VHS of in this day and age would be the original Star Wars trilogy.

I have the first vhs release of Jusassic Park that is still sealed.

Maybe movies that didn’t make it to dvd. Although all the real culturally important movies usually get cleaned up and bumped to the next format. But when I started to get into video games I felt like I’d never have an understanding what all the games were and why certain ones were expensive, But look at me now!!!

I never liked watching VHS when it was new. It was just all we had and I wanted to watch the movies. So yeah I don't understand collecting them at all.

I've gone toward VHS collecting since Video game stuff is so hard to find now

It's really about the iconic art of the boxes. That's really what I could see being collectable.

The VHS tapes that have value are not common movies which exist on all formats. they are rare small press indy movies that have never been released digitally and are getting much harder to find. like old action and horror movies, even some pron VHS tapes from the 80s have a really high value, they used to be a high market item on ebay before they removed adult listings. Obviously much like NES games not every single title will be expensive.

I think that I may have a couple of sealed VHS films. I think that I still have, unopened, This is Spinal Tap, & Forest Gump. Maybe another, too. Plus an oldish X-Box game.

Graded POGS are next

Watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on VHS is one of my most Cherished moments watching a movie. Even now if I’m gonna watch that movie I have to find the Pizza Hut commercial with Goldberg from the mighty ducks in it on KZfaq. And watch that before I start the movie

I know there is discussion about the fidelity, degrading and p&s of VHS can help make some horror "more scary" by obscuring things more or even directors who shot for the video market and can see people paying more for them, but a horror collector is probably going to want to watch it for that unique experience. Sealed copies don't seem to have a demand. If anything sealed blanks would be desired and just copying from a modern transfer would possibly be cheaper and more efficient

so one could possibly sell wiped tapes that are still in its original packaging, as long as it's sealed?

These prices are ridiculous, but a part of me hopes that certain movies that never got a DVD release, and there’s plenty in that category, might find a new audience and those obscure stories can still be enjoyed on the VHS collector market. Or maybe not, if VHS collectors refrain from actually watching the tapes due to condition concerns.

For WWF Colisuem home video that had amazing art, and has the nostalgia factor that makes things valuable, they are amazing. At the end of the day, toys and sports cards shouldn’t be worth anything either, but they are.