With the resurgence of vinyl records over the past five years, it was only a matter of time for VHS tapes to make a comeback. Are they as big as the vinyl record 180-gram-colored-vinyl-repress industry? Not yet … and that’s kind of a good thing.
You can’t just go on Amazon and pick up your favorite flicks on VHS. You have to seek out thrift stores, estate sales, vintage shops and used movie stores, which has become a huge part of the collecting hobby. Since it is so inexpensive, you can keep hitting up local shops and garage sells to get tapes for as low as 25 cents (or, my favorite, mystery boxes filled with tapes for $5). Like collecting old comics or vinyl, you really never know what you will find at these shops and sales: sometimes you walk away with nothing, but that’s part of the search.
Luckily for collectors in the Dallas / Fort Worth area, Piranha Vintage has started hosting a VHS Swap on the first Sunday of every month. At this event, collectors and fans of dead video formats show up to buy, trade and sell VHS tapes and laserdiscs (and some other cool items like old Fangoria magazines). It’s free to attend and free to set up a table if you want to trade and sell tapes. This all happens right outside of the front door of the store and, if there is no more room left on the sidewalk, you just sell from your car (like you’re trunk-or-treating).
After checking out Piranha Vintage several times over the past year, I finally made it out to a VHS Swap in the … sunny 95 degree weather. By the time I got there, the tables and tents were set up and I just walked around from table to table, chatting with the other attendees and sellers. There were a lot of really cool VHS tapes to check out, if just to only look at the box art. But there were some really cool finds (like The X-Files Fight the Future Special Collectors Edition that came with a copy of the script, film cells and a making of VHS), which I purchased … because I couldn’t resist. One table had a small collection of improted Hindi VCDs, as well as some imported Japanese movie magazines (and I picked up the one chock-full of kaiju goodness).
Like video rental stores from our past, you can’t show up expecting to find anything specific. You have to browse and look at everything before making your decision what you will watch that night. And that’s one of the big appeals of going to this event. As I made my way around the tables, I asked if anyone had any of the original Planet of the Apes tapes. Unfortunately, no one had any … but a couple of the sellers said they would keep an eye out for them to bring to the next swap, which was very cool.
These are my people: movie nerds and fans of horror films. Even if I hadn’t bought anything, it was just so much fun, checking out all of the great VHS box art (and going inside Piranha Vintage to check out a bunch of vintage toys … I am currently resisting the urge to buy the 1983 Jabba the Hutt Action Playset.) I really had a blast, picked up some cool tapes, met a bunch of cool people and I am already planning on this being a regular event I attend.
I really want to give Eli Luna huge props for setting this event up, which is about to hit its one year anniversary in October, as well as a thanks to Piranha Vintage for hosting. Word on the sidewalk is that they are planning a big event for their one year anniversary, with sellers coming in from Austin and Houston, at an Alamo Drafthouse. When all the details are out we will definitely share the information … and I have already cleared my calendar.
