Question For The Folks with the HUGE VHS/DVD Collections

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Fiono Coyne\' post=\'118225\' date=\'May 11 2006, 12:37 PM\']
Some shows will be expended; I have no use for 150 Wheel of Fortune episodes from 1995 to the present, for example.
[/quote]
And with that, TMQ800's brain just asploded.

[Ian Wallis]

[quote name=\'Adam Nedeff\' post=\'118214\' date=\'May 11 2006, 01:43 PM\']

This summer I plan to buy a DVD recorded and start converting my stuff to DVD.

Well, remember to have some patience about that, Ian. I got mine 2 1/2 years ago and just now finished.
[/quote]


Hey...I know.  I figure it will be a labor of love.  I can just imagine after a year, my wife saying to me  "...are you STILL doing that?"

I'm planning on getting a recorder with a built in hard drive.  That way I can edit out anything I don't want (like GSN commercials).  I'll keep the original commercials!  

[kav]

I didn't know about GSN until 2000 (when the cable company started carrying it)  but I never had it (it's on the digital tier that IMO is a ripoff).  I wanted to see the shows I missed watching when they originally aired so I Yahoo searched "game show trading". I was lead to the Classicgameshows.com trading message board, and several websites with collection pages.  I taped some episodes and game show related shows to get started.  I've been trading for almost two years and have close to 100 episodes in my collection.

[irismason42]

I gotta have to start tape trading myself but I have such a big VHS tape collection which is mostly game shows plus game show clips shows and I want to trade with some of you guys and matchgame74fan lives not too far away(in southwest Georgia) and I'll give him one of my tapes by First Class U.S. Priority Mail and I haven't known anything about Game Show Network until 1997 when the promo first aired during the endings of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.

[aaron sica]

[quote name=\'irismason42\' post=\'118238\' date=\'May 11 2006, 06:03 PM\']
I gotta have to start tape trading myself but I have such a big VHS tape collection which is mostly game shows plus game show clips shows and I want to trade with some of you guys and matchgame74fan lives not too far away(in southwest Georgia) and I'll give him one of my tapes by First Class U.S. Priority Mail and I haven't known anything about Game Show Network until 1997 when the promo first aired during the endings of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.
[/quote]

I think I beat TMQ800 to the punch - my brain just asploded.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'irismason42\' post=\'118238\' date=\'May 11 2006, 03:03 PM\']
I gotta have to start tape trading myself but I have such a big VHS tape collection which is mostly game shows plus game show clips shows and I want to trade with some of you guys and matchgame74fan lives not too far away(in southwest Georgia) and I'll give him one of my tapes by First Class U.S. Priority Mail and I haven't known anything about Game Show Network until 1997 when the promo first aired during the endings of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.
[/quote]
Best. Post. Evar.

[The Pyramids]

I got lucky.

There's a very nice guy in Virginia who I once suggested joining this board. He gave me for free in '02 two hours of Davidson 'TPIR' and Dawson 'Feud' from '94. A collection is born. After that since did not have GSN I was able to reapy him. He later gave me a lot of material from '88 - '95 that he didn't have to. All of it was in excellent quality and practicallly none of it was circulating.

Also at that time with Adam I did a few big trades for my NBC Letterman for his game shows.

[Adam Nedeff]

I gotta have to start tape trading myself but I have such a big VHS tape collection which is mostly game shows plus game show clips shows and I want to trade with some of you guys and matchgame74fan lives not too far away(in southwest Georgia) and I'll give him one of my tapes by First Class U.S. Priority Mail and I haven't known anything about Game Show Network until 1997 when the promo first aired during the endings of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.

And then Gene Rayburn said, "The Aristocrats!"

Something else I'd like to know is how much money people put into their hobby (equipment, blank tapes/DVDS, etc.). Is it a budget-buster, or do you get by relatively cheap?

So long as you're close to a Sam's Club and/or Wal-Mart, it's a reasonably-priced hobby. I plunk down less than $5 every couple of weeks for fresh tapes and postage on an average trade will come to $4-$5. It also helps that DVD-Rs have gone WAY down in price. 2 1/2 years ago when I got my burner, a spindle of 50 was $60 at Sam's Club, today I'm only paying $14. The closest that tape trading ever came to being a budget buster was when I was in college and without a car, which meant that what I paid for tapes depended on how far I was willing to walk. I was paying $2.50 for a single tape at that point, and that was with an hour of walking involved. (Still cheaper than gym membership, folks.)

Short answer: It's a cheap hobby. I mean, yeah, I have no doubt I'd cry if somebody showed me a grand total for what I've spent over eight years, but I would have just as easily wasted it on wrestling magazines and peanut butter cup milkshakes.

One more thing and then I'll shut up. Given that a lot of people come around here probably are looking for tape trades or at least help getting started, I make a motion to archive this thread after everybody's given their two cents. Somebody might appreciate it down the road.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Adam Nedeff\' post=\'118245\' date=\'May 11 2006, 07:59 PM\']
One more thing and then I'll shut up. Given that a lot of people come around here probably are looking for tape trades or at least help getting started, I make a motion to archive this thread after everybody's given their two cents. Somebody might appreciate it down the road.[/quote]
Consider it done.  Now, as long as we're telling stories...

Back in the age of dinosaurs (or at least before GSN), there was Shokus Video, and maybe one or two other sources for a tiny sampling of old game shows on video.  In the earliest days of the Usenet group, I made a dear friend (let's leave proper names out of this, but he knows who he is) who happily gave me copies of maybe a dozen shows from the seventies in exchange for some extra TV Guides I had lying around.  Those shows are in just about everybody's collections today, but at the time, before GSN and before widespread tape trading, seeing these games from my childhood that I thought I'd never see again was almost enough to make me weep.

I've never had the desire to own eleventy-billion episodes of Press Your Luck, or even of the civilian shows Cullen hosted, but I'm glad you guys out there are doing it so I can send people your way when they're looking for a particular show.  In the meantime, my collection today is of a decent enough size that I've been able to do some good with it.  When I can help a fellow whose grandfather appeared on IGAS as a Bill Cullen lookalike, it's a great feeling.  I've also been fortunate to watch shows that aren't in the "circuit", from museums and from private collectors who plan to stay private.

As for transferring stuff from VHS to DVD, that's actually part of my "real life" job, but ironically, I've been very slow to do that with my own collection.  I've done a lot of the Cullen stuff, of course, but usually I wait until I make a trade with someone else (which I do very rarely anymore) to put something on DVD.  I still have several hundred very well-organized VHS tapes (library training pays off) in a single bookcase, where they'll probably stay for a good long time.

[pyrfan]

I started taping "Super Password" and the daytime "Pyramid" when my family finally got a VCR in 1986. As luck would have it, I was channel-surfing in 1988 and stumbled across USA showing reruns of the 1982-1988 "Pyramid," so I started taping all of them. Of course, getting GSN in 1998 was a big boost to my collection.

To answer Chris' earlier question of what we do with all of those episodes, besides using them for trades, I do go back and watch them little by littile. Mainly, when the weather's too cold for me to take my outdoor walk, I pop one of my "Pyramid" tapes in my VCR and play along with the show while I'm on the treadmill. A 40-minute treadmill walk goes a lot faster when you're trying to think of good clues for THINGS YOU PERCEIVE.


Brendan

[Tim L]

I've been hanging around here (and ATGS before that) for about 7 years now and when I would ask about how to start tape trading I never got many answers..There's just a few things I really want to see..

Anything of You Don't Say (original NBC version)
Original Match Game
Downs' Concentration
Price Is Right (Cullen-ABC years)
Jeopardy! (Fleming)
Original "Hollywood Squares" (Other than what was shown on GSN)

Most of these are childhood memories..I don't have a big desire to "collect" Just to see these shows and others from say 1964-72.It seems that Blank VHS tapes don't do it (from what some have said in the past) I have taped some from GSN over the years, but I dont know if anybody would want any of it.  Other things I have taped include many Christmas Specials and One of a kind programs (Life And Times, etc.) from the old TNN..and other programs such as One of Don Webster's "Upbeat" Specials and 50th anniversary specials from WKYC and WEWS Cleveland.  I have never looked for any favors..Just my take on things..I do appreciate one poster who was kind enough to put some audio of a famous Game show host on a cd  and send it to me a while back..

[tvwxman]

I started collecting game shows the day I returned from the Museum of TV & Radio in NYC. I was about 16 when I went in and saw shows that were faint memories of mine from the 70s... Since I knew the museum didn't have every game show, I thought about collecting one episode of every game show I could get off air, with the intentions of donating them to the museum much later in life.

Years later, thanks to the internet, I discovered that I wasn't the only one out there with a few videotapes of old stuff. 3 tapes of mine slowly became two hundred.

It's taken 10 years, but I can proudly say that i have one episode of just about every game show out there. Unlike other traders, I'm not interested in collecting the entire run of Break the Bank, or every Pat Finn appearance... I just appreciate the genre, and thanks to most of you, I can appreciate it even more.

[Tim L]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'118250\' date=\'May 11 2006, 09:11 PM\']
Consider it done.  Now, as long as we're telling stories...

Back in the age of dinosaurs (or at least before GSN), there was Shokus Video, and maybe one or two other sources for a tiny sampling of old game shows on video.  In the earliest days of the Usenet group, I made a dear friend (let's leave proper names out of this, but he knows who he is) who happily gave me copies of maybe a dozen shows from the seventies in exchange for some extra TV Guides I had lying around.  Those shows are in just about everybody's collections today, but at the time, before GSN and before widespread tape trading, seeing these games from my childhood that I thought I'd never see again was almost enough to make me weep.

I've never had the desire to own eleventy-billion episodes of Press Your Luck, or even of the civilian shows Cullen hosted, but I'm glad you guys out there are doing it so I can send people your way when they're looking for a particular show.  In the meantime, my collection today is of a decent enough size that I've been able to do some good with it.  When I can help a fellow whose grandfather appeared on IGAS as a Bill Cullen lookalike, it's a great feeling.  I've also been fortunate to watch shows that aren't in the "circuit", from museums and from private collectors who plan to stay private.[/quote]




As I posted earlier, I don't desire to own a huge collection, just a few  of some favorites.  I finally took the Shokus Video plunge and have ordered 3 DVD's two of which are game shows..One has Original Concentration from 1968, People are Funny from 1958 and Steve Allen's I've Got a Secret from 1967 (Pearl Bailey).  The other has a 1957 Cullen TPIR , the 1965 PDQ Pilot and Truth Or Consequences (Barker-Color 1966)..The Other DVD consists of Perry Como (Nov. 1949) You Asked For It (Dec. 1951) and Pat Boone Chevy Showroom (Dec. 5, 1957)..They appear to have the best quality possible considering the age of some of the Material..I made the order late last night by credit card and They say it will be shipped today.. (May 19.)..Very pleased with their prompt service

[JakeT]

[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'118183\' date=\'May 11 2006, 12:45 AM\']
For me, it started with a gift tape from Jake Tanner with a bunch of TPIRs from GSN [/quote]

It really does make me feel good to hear that I somehow helped someone get their start into the collectors circuit.  I'm thrilled to see that it appears I managed to do something right for at least one other person at some point during my game show rollercoaster ride!

There are a few people out there, several of them still speaking up today, that I reserve a truly special place in my heart for the parts they played in the meteoric launch of my collection all those years ago.  Between their help plus getting GSN full-time in 1996 or so, my collection started on day one and then grew so fast that I don't believe that I ever truly was able to manage it (cataloguing, trading, etc) or keep everything reasonably up-to-date.  Hell, to this day, there are still probably 100-200 videotapes (or more...eeek!) that were the last added to my collection that have still not yet been reviewed and catalogued...doubt they ever will.

There were three people who were there from the start...two of them were Matt Ottinger (my hero) and John Ricci (luv him forever, especially once Comb Lock finally becomes the hit he deserves)...they were followed quickly by the rest of my extended family consisting of Chuck Donegan and Brad Francini.  So many other great guys revealed themselves shortly after (not gonna keep mentioning names...this mess is too long already) but they know who they are.

Oh, and the remaining member of the original three mentioned above...Randy Amasia...my life changed the day he entered it and it really hasn't been the same since he left us all way too soon, he with so many things left to accomplish and tons of people to terrorize in a way that only Randy could do...those of us who happened to be terrorized by him have truly been made better people as a result.

Sorry for the rambling melancholy babble...I don't poke my head up often anymore so I hope you'll indulge me on the rare times that I do.

Jake

[ChuckNet]

First off, thank you to Jake for the mention...w/a collection like his (that I, as large as mine is, never thought I'd one day near the size of!), it's quite an honor to be part of his "GS trading family". :-)

Anyway, how did I get started? It happened quite by accident: from about 85-93, there were a handful of shows I'd taped myself from various sources, be they original broadcasts, repeats from USA or other sources, etc. Upon discovering how many GS fans were out there and that a market existed for trading GS eps, I invested money from a summer job (being 17 @ the time) in a 2nd VCR and started trading (before then, I managed to get a nice assortment of 60 eps by passing on my old C64 GS games to the aforementioned Matt Ottinger!)...in fact, my first 3 video trades were with Jake, Brad Francini, and John Ricci.

And now, w/a collection nearing 10,000 eps that I'm currently in the tedious process of dubbing to DVD and recataloguing accordingly, I thank each and every one you, whether mentioned here or not, for the part you played in contributing to that amount...you guys rock! :-)

Chuck Donegan (The Grateful "Chuckie Baby")