After the success of the Gallery of Horror tape sale, I arranged to go back to the store to purchase some more but this time I was armed with a few hundred pounds. Unfortunately the guy still hadn’t had time to sort the entire room out but he did have considerably more on show than last time. The majority of the tapes he had were American and Japanese, with only a few British tapes among the piles. Time was not on my side so I quickly scanned the tapes and started making piles of the ones I was most interested in. After half an hour I had compiled over 40 tapes. I had to leave so many behind once again but I know I can get them whenever, as not many people know about this secret stash.

Because i’m cheeky, when the guy was away for a few brief moments I managed to take a few snaps of the US big boxes. I really would love to go back and own them all.
Some very rare titles indeed:

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week I walked into a fairly obscure bookshop in town, it’s one i’ve known about for some time and even visited once before but finding it open is one thing, finding the main owner in too is another. Luckily for me on this occasion it worked out well.
For months now i’ve been trying to get the seller to let me at his private VHS collection, I know he has some rare tapes and i’ve been desperate to have a rummage. After a brief discussion about certain tapes and movies in general he lets me go upstairs to have a quick look, but warned me that I wouldn’t be able to get at much due to the room being a complete mess. Sure enough the door opened and the clutter stared back, there was no way I could get to them all, instead only managing to grab a few handfuls.

The tapes were priced at £10-15 and I only had small amount on me so I took some pictures of the piles of tapes that I could reach, and then I had to decide between a few that I had picked out that intrigued me. I decided on a rare late 70’s TV movie called Dead of Night and a very obscure title called Gallery of Horror.

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While searching through ebay earlier on in the week I stumbled across a job lot of VHS which was for sale, the starting bid was 99p. After some careful consideration I set my price limit and left it in the hands of the VHS Gods. Luckily I won the lot for a little below my top offer, and seeing as though the seller was very close to me for collection, I don’t think I did too bad. The guy then emailed the next day and we agreed a collection date and time. On the same email it stated that he had a further 2-3,000 tapes in the garage that I could look through and select a few titles, and for free.
I was warned beforehand though that the garage contained nothing more than re-issues and certainly nothing of any interest for me. The trouble is, as any collector will tell you, it only takes that one tape…

He also had quite a few US cartons in there too but he said he wanted to keep them back so I looked no further. I couldn’t punish myself. I’d lalso ike to point out that the guy in question is a former collector of VHS and these tapes in his garage are the remains of a few old bulk deals on ebay. Chance purchases, if you will, in the hope that he could find some gems among them.

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After a few dry spells hunting around the carboots and charity shops of late, I didn’t hold out much hope for this bank holiday weekend. And it appeared to be heading for yet another dry patch when the first carboot we stumbled across had about 9 cars and a burger van, I don’t think I need to tell you that we didn’t stay long.
The next boot was much better, I had only found about 4 or 5 decent tapes but the signs were good. Then came rows upon rows of nothingness, not a single tape in sight, that was until we reached the final row. I could see a pile of tapes on the floor but it wasn’t until I got closer that I realised I had struck pre-certed gold. Or at the very least, silver.

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