For most Americans, videotapes became garage dust collectors, table leg lifters, or prime yard sale bargain bin fillers as soon as DVDs were affordable and common at the turn of the millennium. Until August of this year, when they were officially pulled from the production line in Japan, though, there were still around 750,000 worldwide annual buyers snapping these things up.
While Blu-ray and digital streaming devices have gone totally mainstream, there are some who are still clinging to their cassettes and aren’t planning to quit collecting them anytime soon.
For Matt D., a 16-year-old Ohioan who still watches two to four films on tape each day, there are practical reasons behind his lingering VHS obsession: low price and availability of oddball pics. In fact, that was what drew him to the device in the first place, long after tapes had become ghosts of the mass market shelf.
“I was collecting DVDs for a while before I started collecting VHS,” he told The Post. “I do look on Netflix for some older movies, but they’re so small, I end up looking for a movie for a while and just go watch a VHS tape instead.”
Right now, he’s got about 1,400 tapes (and counting), and he estimates that he pays around 50 cents a pop, a remarkable drop from the price tag that might come with a disc version of the same feature. Not only that, but there are some items he just hasn’t been able to find in big-box stores and their online equivalents.
“It’s so hard to find very odd DVD or Blu-rays,” he says. “I have hundreds of tapes that are kids’ educational movies or low-budget action movies that have yet to make DVD conversion and maybe never will. I feel like the art of weird low-budget releases has died with Blu-ray.”
His favorites to watch on the throwback platform? Jean Claude Van Damme’s bevy of actioners, Canadian comedy flick “Strange Brew,” and early-‘80s sci-fi satire “They Live.”
Meanwhile, Brooklyn-based pop culture writer Andrew LaSane’s love of VHS started in the regular course like most everyone else who had to adopt the “Be kind, rewind” ethos back in the day: watching Disney’s clamshell-cased classics over at Grandma’s place. His holdover interest comes from an appreciation of the original visual appeal that’s involved with the Mylar methodology of old, much like vinyl collectors who insist that it just sounds different.
“I appreciate the quality of Blu-ray and the special features that places produce, but some movies just feel more authentic when they haven’t been restored in 4K so that you can see the pores on the actor’s face,” he said. “You just don’t get the same satisfaction from inserting a disc as you do from the ritual of pushing in a VHS.”
For LaSane, whose collection is a bit more modest at 250 to 300 scooped up from stoop sales and thrift stores, “it’s been more about the aesthetic and not the rarity factor.”
Now that VHSes are out of wide circulation and their players are officially off the production line, LaSane has seen a jump in the cost of certain tape titles on account of the niche market that still seeks them out.
“It has gotten increasingly difficult to find stuff now that more people know there is a market for it, especially in Brooklyn. Some thrift stores have even jacked up the price on tapes because they realized people were buying them,” he explained.
“I’m also a big fan of horror, but I’ve resisted the urge to get into collecting ‘big box’ horror tapes because of the hefty price tags. I just admire the artwork from afar.” Indeed, eBay auctions of those thriller collections can run as high as $150, depending on the uniqueness of the offering.
A closed Facebook group called Horror VHS Collectors Unite! boasts more than 11,000 members, and a specialty site, VHSCollector.com, has more than 3,000 fans listed on the social media site.
It’s LaSane’s?original love of Disney pics is what could really break the bank, though. The House of Mouse’s old tapes are now being sold online for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.
For Matt D., the fact that new VCRs aren’t being made anymore won’t stop him from forging on with his infatuation. If his breaks?
“I can go to a thrift store and buy another one for about eight bucks.”
Thus the tape lives on.