When Did VHS actually get cheap to own

[andrew8798]

I Know Batman 89 and Jurassic Park were $20 but before then if you wanted to buy the major movies it was around $50-$60 for a movie. That's why the Rental places were a great thing.

[SmashTV]

In the mid 90s, maybe earlier, you could get 'five videos for £30' here in the UK. My collection rapidly increased as a result.

[andrew8798]

I know last year I had to throw a lot of them away. Wasn't even worth the shipping to try and sell them. Only ones I kept were the Disney ones.

You would think with DVD/Blu-Ray those Disney VHS would go down in price.

Also kept the those old Star Wars OT VHS

When people ask me how many versions of a movie that I have I can safety say Star Wars

[Jiren]

About 96/97 ish

Before that VHS were reasonable (£10 - £15) but around 97 time a lot more "5 for £30", "3 for £15" sales started popping up more and more.

Was that when DVD was getting more popular?, I didn't get into DVD until around 99/00 (First ones I ever got were Phantasm & Wishmaster 2)

[andrew8798]

DVD really took off with the PS2

[eDemento2099]

Apr 30, 2017 5:37:41 GMT -5 andrew8798 said:

I Know Batman 89 and Jurassic Park were $20 but before then if you wanted to buy the major movies it was around $50-$60 for a movie.

I don't think that's correct. I remember my family buying a VHS copy of Home Alone from a retail store in an American mall in the early 90s, and the tape definitely cost less than $20. (Jurassic Park didn't debut in theaters until years later.) We also had some Disney films on VHS that were less than $20 for new copies.

There's no way in hell my family would have bought films on VHS if they cost $50 or more per movie.

[andrew8798]

Might be a lot of times I'm going off old memories

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

Apr 30, 2017 6:50:46 GMT -5 eDemento2099 said:

Apr 30, 2017 5:37:41 GMT -5 andrew8798 said:

I Know Batman 89 and Jurassic Park were $20 but before then if you wanted to buy the major movies it was around $50-$60 for a movie.

I don't think that's correct. I remember my family buying a VHS copy of Home Alone from a retail store in an American mall in the early 90s, and the tape definitely cost less than $20. (Jurassic Park didn't debut in theaters until years later.) We also had some Disney films on VHS that were less than $20 for new copies.

There's no way in hell my family would have bought films on VHS if they cost $50 or more per movie.

Batman was the first movie, outside of Disney movies, really marketed as priced to own on VHS. Most big movies that followed were similarly priced, so Home Alone definitely would have been available when it came out.

[Powerline]

Apr 30, 2017 5:56:02 GMT -5 andrew8798 said:

I know last year I had to throw a lot of them away. Wasn't even worth the shipping to try and sell them. Only ones I kept were the Disney ones.

You would think with DVD/Blu-Ray those Disney VHS would go down in price.

Also kept the those old Star Wars OT VHS

When people ask me how many versions of a movie that I have I can safety say Star Wars

I'm actually jealous of my 5 year old niece (a sentence I never thought I'd say).  A couple years ago when we were hitting up garage sales, we found a giant box of Disney VHS tapes they were selling for a buck a piece.  We offered $25 for the entire box, and they took the deal.  There's gotta be 30+ tapes in it with several highlights; Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Aladdin, Toy Story...I remember it making my Easter just to get Lion King on VHS, and now she's growing up with an obscene amount of Disney VHS tapes.  She even knows how to run them.  Even when she was 3, she'd hop up, grab the tape she wanted, pop out the last one, and put the new one in.  Only issue is she doesn't put them back in the case unless you get on her to do it.

[Deleted]

The one video we bought with our top-loading (!!!) VCR in 1983 was "It's a Wonderful Life". We ended up recording over it because the quality was not very good.

Mid '80s, my dad bought a lot of stuff from a nostalgia catalog. Tapes were like $5-10 each. Abbott & Costello, Golden Age Of Wrestling, a bunch more my dad remembered from watching stuff at "the show" as a kid (what he called going to the movies).

But, yeah, Batman was the big one.

(We bought mainly blank tapes, they were anywhere from $3-7 a piece depending on brand.)

[Deleted]

I remember that my family didn't own a VCR until Batman '89 came out and that was the first tape they bought with it. I guess now I know why. I wasn't aware it was the first reasonably priced tape.

[Alyce: Old Media Enthusiast]

Definitely the mid-90's when VCRs were cheaper to buy

[Deleted]

My aunt bought me a Sports Illustrated subscription every year and I'd get the free videos. "Football Follies" got wore out from all the times I'd watch that.

Edit: She also bought me the 1986 World Series tape, because we were Mets fans. I remember that was $20.

[Z-A Sandbaggin' Son of a b!%@h]

It was more expensive for rental stores to buy VHS movies to rent. They had to get from a certain distributor in order to legally rent them so the price was higher so the movie companies made the money.

I can remember seeing the order form at a movie place in my hometown and being shocked at the prices when I knew at Walmart they were like 15-25 bucks a pop. The owner of the store told me that. So that's what I've always believed

[Throwback]

Apr 30, 2017 6:45:37 GMT -5 andrew8798 said:

DVD really took off with the PS2

That's what did it for me. I didn't even even know it played dvds until a friend told me so I bought Pink Floyd the wall.

[Mr PONYMANIA Mr Jenzie]

most i've paid for a vhs was £14.99, the newer last releases were a pound or too higher, like THE TWO TOWERS WIDESCREEN

as for star wars, i have EMPIRE and RETURN cbs fox fullscreen releases, think they are the second ever video releases for them

[wildojinx]

On a side note, wrestling VHS tapes didnt start going down in price until 1998, before that they were usually 40 dollars or more (aside from those 60 minute ones like WWF High Flyers or those PD "Golden age of wrestling" tapes).

[Deleted]

The boom of the video rental stores was the downfall of VHS prices. Although even then, it wasn't really until the video stores started selling the videos themselves when the prices (and availability, even) really started to come down elsewhere. I remember many videos still costing a lot in the early '90s, because you couldn't find them in department stores. Those that you could where the mainstream releases, but back then wrestling videos weren't very mainstream so IF you saw those outside a video store for sale.....they cost a bit.

Apr 30, 2017 5:56:02 GMT -5 andrew8798 said:

I know last year I had to throw a lot of them away. Wasn't even worth the shipping to try and sell them. Only ones I kept were the Disney ones.

You would think with DVD/Blu-Ray those Disney VHS would go down in price.

Disney is very finicky with their home video releases. Every wave of movie releases is essentially limited, so once they close those vault doors on a particular release the collectible market is well aware and ups the prices. I recently bought a bunch of older (Golden Collection, aka original) Disney DVDs - of stuff I knew was rare - and even though I got a hell of a deal I was still paying $15-20 a pop for them.

Also kept the those old Star Wars OT VHS

When people ask me how many versions of a movie that I have I can safety say Star Wars

I have the early '90s original special edition (collector's edition, technically) - when he released a box set that cleaned up the film - and I'll never ever get rid of that. Even still have the collectible book that came with it, and I barely ever keep those...

[Throwback]

Apr 30, 2017 10:58:34 GMT -5 @knapp said:

When people ask me how many versions of a movie that I have I can safety say Star Wars

I have the early '90s original special edition (collector's edition, technically) - when he released a box set that cleaned up the film - and I'll never ever get rid of that. Even still have the collectible book that came with it, and I barely ever keep those...[/quote]


I had that. Then my bro sold them at a pawn shop along with my copy of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the movie.
Picked up all 4 at a thrift store last year for $3.98 Canadian

[El Pollo Guerrera]

I believe that the price for videos really didn't start dropping across the board until DVDs started becoming popular. The patern for movies releases was like this:

1) theater
2) six to twelve months later, release to rental market
3) six to twelve months later, release to stores at purchasable price

Sure, there were movies that came out cheap right away, like Disney movies and huge action flicks that the studio wanted to cash in on right away, but for the most part movie that came out for rental were expensive UNLESS you bought package deals (six copies of movie A that people want to see bundled with six copies of movie B that no one heard of), so it would work out to $70-100 a tape without the bundle or $40-60 with the bundle.

The studios wanted money. The rental market was a great way to make it. DVDs coming put cheap started to break that, along with movies coming out sooner to pay-per-view cable.

(I worked for two video stores over ten years in the 90's into the 2000's, I do know a little about the prices... Canadian prices, though)