Last summer was the year of the finds for me. There’s just something about the sun that makes people want to part with their treasures. It seemed like everywhere I went people would flock to me with tapes. Then the summer passed and the tapes dried up. I was once again reduced to purchasing tapes online, with only a few turning up in charity stores and car boot sales.

At the start of this year, I had promised myself that I would slow down with my collecting, something that I had stuck to until the end of March, when an opportunity presented itself that I wasn’t about to pass up on.

Two of my major hauls last year came from the same place, an old second hand store on the outskirts of town. From the outside, it looks like the sort of place where Ed Gein would dispose of his victims. The theme carries on to the inside too. I had a few days off work and the sun was shining, so I jumped in the car and headed there in the hope that they had some new stock. I was in luck. They had indeed received more stock, albeit a ton of tapes thrown together into one gigantic pile in the corner of the room, with a few hundred more in storage at the back. I had lcukily brought an empty crate, the VHS collectors equivalent of the shopping trolley, and began to fill it with all sorts of late 80’s to early 90’s magic.