Old videotapes

January 4, 2008 10:44 AM

What do people do with old videotapes?

Do they pitch them, donate them, sell them (on Amazon, maybe?), transfer to DVD, something else?

I have a few boxes of tapes and I'd like to clean them out, at least in part because I have not watched them in a few years, but I am unwilling to throw them away unless there is no real alternative.

posted by A-Train to shopping (13 comments total)

Freecycle is great for this sort of thing. Just post that you have a box of misc. VHS tapes, drop a few names, and offer the whole lot to one freecycler. Someone will surely come pick them up, probably within days.
posted by nkknkk at 10:49 AM on January 4, 2008

Quite a few people have donated boxes of videotapes to my public library.
posted by box at 10:54 AM on January 4, 2008

are they movies or home movies? home movies you can pay someone to copy to dvd, and then just toss the tapes if you want (i don't think you want to donate those to a stranger!). as for "regular" movies, definitely try freecycle or craigslist. when i finally got rid of my vhs collection, i had several dozen people from freecycle wanting them.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:18 AM on January 4, 2008

My dad has a lot of old video tapes and he ended up transferring them all to DVD. I was surprised how good the quality was when he transfered them to DVD, not perfect but better then how there were.
posted by lilkeith07 at 11:20 AM on January 4, 2008

We are in the process of transferring ours to DVD. Actual store bought movies get sent to charity stores or Freecycle, and the home movies I have been knitting and crocheting into shopping bags, hats, purses, and floor mats, which is probably sort of odd. :D
posted by Orb at 11:44 AM on January 4, 2008

They are so worthless that I wouldn't bother trying to sell them. I might donate actual VHS movies to libraries or charities. Tapes that started out blank that I recorded onto (which made up most of my collection) ... I pitch.
posted by iguanapolitico at 11:52 AM on January 4, 2008

Sorry if this sounds preachy, but please don't toss the older tapes, if they are home movies! DVDs are unreliable, and even though older videotape formats kind of suck too, at least you will have an extra copy in case the DVD gets a scratch, or DVDs become obsolete in five, ten, fifteen years.

I'd recommend (if they are something you want to keep and can't find elsewhere) having a service transfer them to DVD and hard disk drive, on a reliable format (motion JPEG 2000 I've heard good things about, but you can talk to the transfer people and see what they recommend). I see you're in NYC - Mercer Media does great work.

There are also videotape recycling facilities (some charge, some don't).
posted by ethel at 12:01 PM on January 4, 2008

errr.. Mercer Media, even.
posted by ethel at 12:03 PM on January 4, 2008

Charity shops around here won't take VHS tapes any more. They've got shelves of them, and nobody buys them.
posted by Hogshead at 12:21 PM on January 4, 2008

I've been using my hundreds and hundreds of old VHS tapes behind the CDs and books on my many shelves. Since they are blocky, fairly lightweight, and of a regular size, they do a great job "bringing forward" the back wall of a slightly-too-deep shelf, so that the CDs/books/whatever are more visible and grabbable. Doesn't seem to bother the shelves, either. Works especially well on high and low shelves, so their contents can be seen from eye level.

I actually have some rare and weird stuff on VHS, but I rarely look at it. This way, I haven't thrown it away, but I've removed it from basement/attic/sight.
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:23 PM on January 4, 2008 [2 favorites]

The Goodwills in my area (Austin) charge $0.99 per tape, which makes them slightly cheaper than renting. I buy them all the time, and I know I'm not the only one. There's usually two or three people parusing the vids whenever I am there.
posted by 23skidoo at 1:30 PM on January 4, 2008

Getting back to you on this...

• The DVD-transferring folk

  lilkeith07: My dad has a lot of old video tapes and he ended up transferring them all to DVD. Orb: We are in the process of transferring ours to DVD.

  Services in this area charge $25-40 per tape to transfer. There is one service online (vhs-to-dvd.com) that is cheaper, but still too much. It's cheaper to throw the tapes away and to buy new DVDs. Now if you mean doing it myself, well that would be cheaper but cost money for hardware and be a drain on my time.
• Don't bother trying to sell

  iguanapolitico: They are so worthless that I wouldn't bother trying to sell them.

  I could not agree more. I looked at the prices on Amazon for boxed sets. They start at $0.89 and go as high as $15 if factory-sealed. The shipping is more than the used tapes.

I think I'm going to end up chucking them. Thanks all.
posted by A-Train at 2:26 PM on January 4, 2008

Well, yeah, we are doing them ourselves with a vcr and a DVD player/recorder. After we found out how much it cost to transfer, we went ahead and invested in a moderately priced recorder, and we've been transferring them at night, one a night, while we sleep. It'll take a while, I guess, but it'll get done.
posted by Orb at 4:08 PM on January 4, 2008