With no fresh leads in over a year, and a long winter that prevented me from getting to any car boot sales, I have been mostly restricted to bulk buying tapes online, something that I strongly dislike doing. The fun has always been in the hunt for me. So when a friend got in touch and told me that he was getting rid of his entire collection, I jumped at the chance to adopt it. I like to think of myself as Pippa from Home and Away, but with tapes instead of… ah, you get the picture.
That friend goes by the name of Tim (@Reed_my_tweet on Twitter), and fortunately only lives an hour away from my house. So after Tim had gathered together a large chunk of his collection ready for me to take, he gave me a call and I hopped in the video van (Peugeot), making the short journey north to Stoke. I honestly wasn’t prepared for the sheer volume of tapes that awaited me.
I had forgotten to cover these up when I left for home. You would not believe the looks you get with a car full of VHS on a busy motorway. Luckily, i’m no stranger to these sort of looks.
I never made an official count on return, but I estimate there to have been in the region of 300-400 tapes that travelled back with me. I already own a large portion of what I took, but i’m always in the market for sleeve upgrades etc. And they would only have ended up in the tip if i’d have left them anyway. I could never be that guy.
Despite the amount of doubles, I have still decided to include them in the picture gallery below. There were a lot more tapes, but these are the best of the best. The cream of the crop that rose to the top, so to speak.
I was also given these two lovely UK quad posters, and plan to one day frame the Thunder one.
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Holy crap! So much good stuff in that haul.
Jealousy of the highest order.
Thanks man! There are a few that i’m really over the moon with.
wow! i long for the day when im lucky enough to get a score of that size! sure i dont do to bad every now and again, i manage to find some odds and sods but nothing of this awesome quality 😀 well done mate
That is one hell of a good haul! I remember alot of those films from the days when the video rental van would come around and my brother’s and I were allowed to choose one film each…And of course we went for the coolest covers. I think creepshow was rented at least 3 times.
Do you back up your tapes? These movies really should be preserved for future generations…
Love the blog 🙂
Thanks for the kind words! I back up a few, but not as many as I should. Obviously i’m only doing back-ups of VHS only titles, otherwise it gets a little crazy.
The video van was amazing, but sadly never came around my part of town. I am aware of the ‘Dad’s section’ though.
The Demons of Ludlow! One of my faves – it makes very little sense, as I recall, though I like ’em like that! Have you seen it yet? It has some great ‘haunting’ scenes…
I love that movie! The brick off the head always cracked me up. Fun flick.
If you’ve never seen Night Train To Terror, Aenigma and Next of Kin, you’re in for a treat. I’m sure NTTT will be right up your street!
That’s an insane haul. As someone that’s starting to collect VHS after years of amassing obscure DVDs I can’t even imagine coming across that kind of collection. So much more character and charm than sterile DVDs. You have a big fan here.
I live for these kind of hauls Dale, very nice to see a NightBeast among that little lot.