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bubba966

Cinema Ninja!,
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Adjusted for inflation or did you guys really pay $100 back then? Serious question.

VHS used to not be really for sale to individuals. They were sold to rental shops. So if you wanted to buy something on VHS you'd have to pay the cost your video store would pay. I recall when T2 hit video and seeing it for sale for $110 on VHS. Eventually VHS started being sold for normal consumer use, but yeah they used to be around a hundo to buy.
 

Kid Panda

The Chinese Kid
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VHS used to not be really for sale to individuals. They were sold to rental shops. So if you wanted to buy something on VHS you'd have to pay the cost your video store would pay. I recall when T2 hit video and seeing it for sale for $110 on VHS. Eventually VHS started being sold for normal consumer use, but yeah they used to be around a hundo to buy.

Yea most people didnt realize that was the reason the video store had it like a month before retail. They paid a premium to make money till it hit the retail market. My buddies dad used to get some magazine that would have all the new movies and the prices were all in the 90-120 range. Kinda crazy to think about.
 

supergoose

Die Gans,
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VHS used to not be really for sale to individuals. They were sold to rental shops. So if you wanted to buy something on VHS you'd have to pay the cost your video store would pay. I recall when T2 hit video and seeing it for sale for $110 on VHS. Eventually VHS started being sold for normal consumer use, but yeah they used to be around a hundo to buy.
That does make sense. Thanks. I had no idea that movies used to be that expensive. We never bought any and I only remember my parents renting Home Alone and Wayne's World that we watched on a player that my dad brought home from work over the weekend. My parents must have bought their first player in like 1998. To them that wasn't a top priority.
 

wyo

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VHS used to not be really for sale to individuals. They were sold to rental shops. So if you wanted to buy something on VHS you'd have to pay the cost your video store would pay. I recall when T2 hit video and seeing it for sale for $110 on VHS. Eventually VHS started being sold for normal consumer use, but yeah they used to be around a hundo to buy.

Consumer VHS was available in the 80s, way before T2. The first one I bought was Robocop and it cost about £10.
 

Catoblepa

King's Dry Cleaner
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One of the reasons first VHS tapes were so damn expensive, is mastering: with Laserdisc it took an instant to produce a copy (they were pressed, just like vinyl discs), while a VHS movie took... exactly the running time of the movie. With an average of two hours/movie, just imagine how many new, expensive recording machines were needed to produce tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of copies of a title in a reasonable time. That's one of the reasons VCRs were heavily promoted as TV recording devices, at least at the beginning.
 

redfield0009

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VHS used to not be really for sale to individuals. They were sold to rental shops. So if you wanted to buy something on VHS you'd have to pay the cost your video store would pay. I recall when T2 hit video and seeing it for sale for $110 on VHS. Eventually VHS started being sold for normal consumer use, but yeah they used to be around a hundo to buy.


We got my Dad T2 on VHS when it released. It was like 19.99. Definitely not 100 bucks.
 

pixeljunkie

Whilst Drunk., I Found God., Booze = Bad.,
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We got my Dad T2 on VHS when it released. It was like 19.99. Definitely not 100 bucks.

VHS used to not be really for sale to individuals. They were sold to rental shops. So if you wanted to buy something on VHS you'd have to pay the cost your video store would pay. I recall when T2 hit video and seeing it for sale for $110 on VHS. Eventually VHS started being sold for normal consumer use, but yeah they used to be around a hundo to buy.

Exactly
 
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Kid Panda

The Chinese Kid
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Movies at retail were not the same as the rental store videos. They could have them a full month before they hit wal mart/best buy/etc. T2 was in blockbuster a full month before we bought it at best buy when it first hit retail. In the late 90s early 2000s, movies just got released everywhere at the same time.
 

fake

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One of the reasons first VHS tapes were so damn expensive, is mastering: with Laserdisc it took an instant to produce a copy (they were pressed, just like vinyl discs), while a VHS movie took... exactly the running time of the movie. With an average of two hours/movie, just imagine how many new, expensive recording machines were needed to produce tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of copies of a title in a reasonable time. That's one of the reasons VCRs were heavily promoted as TV recording devices, at least at the beginning.

I could be wrong, but if VHS manufacturing was anything like audio cassette manufacturing, the studio would send out masters to duplication factories. Those factories would create a sub-master to make retail copies with. I think they then split the signal to multiple blanks, but like you said, the duplication process was obviously in real-time rather than offline.
 

ChopstickSamurai

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The worst was the time my buddy’s VCR tried to eat a tape and we thought we’d be charged a hundo for the tape. We did our best to flatten it back out and respooled the tape so it mostly played. We were worried for the first week after returning the tape.
 

FAT$TACKS

Not Average Joe., Not Average Homeowner., Not Aver
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Here is an old article that has some info on the deal with VHS prices back then.

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/15/arts/marketing-top-gun-cassette.html

Also, on a side note, the high cost of VCR's and released on tape movies, back in the day was one of the reasons that the premium movie channels were a big deal. Everyone I knew who had a premium movie channel also recorded movies off of it... by the way blank tapes were like 25-35 each back then in the early days of home video tape.

I actually have in my collection an old Fotomat rental tape. They should have all been destroyed. You could get a catalogue and pick out a movie and it would be shipped to your local Fotomat. You had it for so many days and then dropped it off again there. I think the cost back then was about 25 bucks or so.. but video rental stores soon came into being and killed that off.
 

terry.330

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I remember a friend of mines dad had a legit full home theater setup in their basement and was on some mail order list and got all the releases the same time as the rental stores. He had racks full of VHS and Laserdisc and never opened any of them. It was insane. I went over and they had just gotten Batman we opened that fucker and watched it like 3 times in a row. When his dad came home he beat the shit out of his kid and I was never allowed to go over there again.
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
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I remember a friend of mines dad had a legit full home theater setup in their basement and was on some mail order list and got all the releases the same time as the rental stores. He had racks full of VHS and Laserdisc and never opened any of them. It was insane. I went over and they had just gotten Batman we opened that fucker and watched it like 3 times in a row. When his dad came home he beat the shit out of his kid and I was never allowed to go over there again.

Death by video tape.
 

theMot

Reformed collector of junk
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I remember a friend of mines dad had a legit full home theater setup in their basement and was on some mail order list and got all the releases the same time as the rental stores. He had racks full of VHS and Laserdisc and never opened any of them. It was insane. I went over and they had just gotten Batman we opened that fucker and watched it like 3 times in a row. When his dad came home he beat the shit out of his kid and I was never allowed to go over there again.

We need to get this dad to register as a member here.
 

wyo

King of Spammers
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I remember a friend of mines dad had a legit full home theater setup in their basement and was on some mail order list and got all the releases the same time as the rental stores. He had racks full of VHS and Laserdisc and never opened any of them. It was insane. I went over and they had just gotten Batman we opened that fucker and watched it like 3 times in a row. When his dad came home he beat the shit out of his kid and I was never allowed to go over there again.

VHS collecting used to be serious business!
 

3rdStrikeMike

Dodgeball Yakuza
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I remember a friend of mines dad had a legit full home theater setup in their basement and was on some mail order list and got all the releases the same time as the rental stores. He had racks full of VHS and Laserdisc and never opened any of them. It was insane. I went over and they had just gotten Batman we opened that fucker and watched it like 3 times in a row. When his dad came home he beat the shit out of his kid and I was never allowed to go over there again.

I wonder how much it cost to get them that quickly. I remember some clerk mentioning it was super expensive to replace them in the rental store when I was a kid. He said some ultra expensive price they paid for each brand new VHS. Never knew if this was legit or him just blowing smoke up people's asses so they didn't just keep one.

Edit: just read the link FAT$TACKS and some more previous posts. I remember the clerk saying something like 150 plus, so that probably lines up with cost and fee for being naughty.
 
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bubba966

Cinema Ninja!,
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Sep 24, 2013
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Movies at retail were not the same as the rental store videos. They could have them a full month before they hit wal mart/best buy/etc. T2 was in blockbuster a full month before we bought it at best buy when it first hit retail. In the late 90s early 2000s, movies just got released everywhere at the same time.

At least someone else remembers this.

I wasn't saying you couldn't get VHS tapes for less than a hundo. But that they were for sale for rental for a while first before eventually going retail. So if you wanted T2 as soon as it hit VHS it wasn't going to be $20 because it was for sale for rental only so you'd pay the high premium they used to charge rental stores for new movies. And yeah, average cost for a new tape for rental was $90-120.

And I remember T2 being $110 at my local store as they had the LD for less and I was confused as I'd not seen VHS offered for sale for that high of a price yet. But T2 was in such demand that retailers could sell the rental copies at rental store prices before it was going to be avail for normal retail sale. It was most certainly not a normal occurance. I don't recall seeing too many other VHS releases offered up at initial rental release due to the high cost.
 

bubba966

Cinema Ninja!,
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Sep 24, 2013
Posts
1,542
I wonder how much it cost to get them that quickly. I remember some clerk mentioning it was super expensive to replace them in the rental store when I was a kid. He said some ultra expensive price they paid for each brand new VHS. Never knew if this was legit or him just blowing smoke up people's asses so they didn't just keep one.

It was most certainly legit. Had a corner store rental place when I was a kid that I'd rent from all of the time. He used to show me the catalog of upcoming titles in case there was something I thought he should get that he'd not already planned on getting. And just as Panda mentioned the average cost for new rental copies of VHS tapes was $90-120. Shit was nuts, but that's how it was.

And damn do I miss that little shop. Wasn't big, but he'd get in all the really great B movie shit. Dude loved talking about and watching movies. He was always so excited to tell me about the newest stuff he'd got in. I spent lots of allowance $ in that place...
 

FAT$TACKS

Not Average Joe., Not Average Homeowner., Not Aver
15 Year Member
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Okay, one more video pickup.

This one is a little tiny bit NSFW so I've put it in tags. If it's an issue for anyone I'll take it down.

It's a Betamax Double Feature.

To the best of my knowledge there were only 3 Brothers Grime releases. I've seen two of them on DVD that can still be bought today through Excalibur but I never see any of them come up on older formats so I had to pick this up.


Gonad the Barbarian / Search for Uranus

The Sex Wars saga continues in full animation as Princess Orgasma, the great Princess Layme and Pussy La Mour search out new sexual adventures in the far-flung erotic regions of outer space. An XXXtoon tale of malevolent sexual pleasures, told in two parts. In the first, Lord Uranus is seeking his 100th virgin to sacrifice at the Festival Of Darkness, which will restore his youth. In the second episode, Princess Layme is called upon to find the missing Pussy L'Amour, who has disappeared on the planet lesbians. It is all a part of Gonad the Barbarian's plan to rule the galaxy through domination and subjugation of the flesh. Will somebody stop Gonad the Barbarian? Or will the day of doom come? May the farce be with you!


Also, not my photo of the item.

Spoiler:
gonad1.jpg

gonad2.jpg
 
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