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.
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.