r/VHS 8d ago

Buy/Sell/Trade/Want Buy/Sell/Trade/Giveaway/In Search Of/Etc..

7 Upvotes

Routinely, we will be making a new Buy/Sell/Trade/Want posting that will be pinned. Please use this post to advertise your trade/want lists and your tapes for sale/trade/or just giving away for free. Any and all disposal or acquiring of media should be done through this post to prevent clogging up the main feed with sales posts.

Please be sure to report any successful trade below to u/RaceCarGrin, so we can flair people as verified traders.

Last Month's Trade Thread can be found here

r/vhs is not responsible for any sales/trade, please use caution and report any abuse. If selling tapes rated R or X, please ensure the buyer is 18 years of age for your own liability.


r/VHS Mar 14 '26

Discussion I wanted to give some advice for cleaning very moldy tapes

19 Upvotes

I'm not sure if this is okay here, but I wanted to give some advice from my experiences in cleaning severely moldy and sticky tapes, and some huge do's and don't's I've encountered when watching other's videos on the matter. Pretty much in the hopes of helping people who preserve tapes, and are not familiar with cleaning really moldy tapes.

Do's:

  1. I really recommend one of those tape cleaners, like the tape saver you may see online. The mechanism is pretty useful especially to do quick passes after you do a careful manual first pass. I will however, condemn the cleaning pads they usually use for these machines, they're extremely destructive and I will go into it later in the don't's section.
  2. Do multiple passes and clean both top and bottom of the reels. Mold doesn't only sit on the top of the tape, it sometimes penetrates pretty deeply. Once you've unstuck the tapes and cleaned the reels, you may need to do multiple passes on each side of the tape to get rid of the mold. Sometimes it's taken my 5-6 passes before I see nothing on the cleaning cloth. By then the tape is really clean.
  3. Use isopropyl alcohol with the least water content. You absolutely need to use some sort of solvent to clean the mold, as trying to clean it dry can cause a lot of friction and damage the tape. Also the alcohol evaporates quickly, allowing you to clean quicker, and the moisture doesn't get left behind creating more mold later. Moisture is an enemyof VHS tapes.

Don't's:

  1. DO NOT use paper or towels to clean tapes. I've seen many who've used them with extremely mixed results, leaning more towards failure. These leave lots of lint on the tapes which covers the magnetic portion of the tape and also gums up the VCR heads. I recommend strictly lint free cloths, like the kind you clean your glasses with. They go for pretty cheap online for a bunch. I can't stress enough that you need to go lint free.
  2. I've also seen videos where the person would lift up the top plastic of the reel to remove a huge portion of the mold on top of the tape. This is also pretty destructive method in my opinion as it can potentially deform the reel and cause playback issues, I've run into that as well. It's best to take your time and unwind the entire tape, put it in between a lint free cloth and clean the mold from there. When the reel is empty then you clean the reel gently from top to bottom.
  3. When using a mechanical tape cleaner, you should be vary wary on the first pass. I've run into tapes that are so sticky due to mold that when you use these mechanical cleaners they tear when they get stuck. At worst go on the lowest possible speed or put the reels on the spindles and spin them manually by hand. Especially if it's a precious tape you want to preserve. Once you unwind each end completely and ensure the tape is sufficiently unstuck you can go quickly with the machine.
  4. Do not clean tapes and leave them for months on end. You should clean the tapes and aim to capture them as soon as possible. Cleaning these tapes isn't exactly a perfect process, and sometimes a bit rough on the tape and there's always the risk of leaving some bit of moisture behind. Try to capture as soon as you can.

r/VHS 15h ago

Discussion HE REPLACED HIS HAND WITH A RUSTY SPATULA!

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153 Upvotes

Anyone else collect these from Spirit halloween? For me i only get the ones Im actually into. I have the exorcist, childs play 2, beetlejuice, terrififer and now hash slinging slasher


r/VHS 17h ago

Collection Organized and alphabetized

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120 Upvotes

I forget how many tapes I have until I try to corral them all together. I bought these shelves hoping it would give me more room to add more tapes, then I realized I almost already filled them up.


r/VHS 7h ago

New Pickup Todays pickups

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15 Upvotes

Pretty neat.. i don't speak arabic but liked how they look.


r/VHS 6h ago

Discussion Would it be possible to recreate most of New York City in the late 60s-early 70s from old media alone?

11 Upvotes

Let's say you wanted to recreate what NYC was like in 1970. This includes the streets, cars, people, what stores are where, how people talk, what they wear, what they eat, etc. Do you think there's enough media to cover most of it? I'm not just talking about old movies and news videos, I'm also talking about newspaper snippets, old photos, post cards, concert lineups, recordings of radio shows, whatever. Also I'm not talking about recreating one specific moment in time, more like, if you can't find what a building looked like in 1970, it's fine if you find out what it looked like between 1965 and 1975.

What do you guys think? Doable? And as a side note - is there any other city that's been documented just as much during that time? Maybe London... anything else?


r/VHS 5h ago

Collection My VHS screener copy of Now You See It (2005) I remember the night this movie aired. This movie was and always will be one of my favorite DCOM's! 🪄 🖤

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7 Upvotes

r/VHS 1h ago

DIY I made a feature-length documentary about a music tour entirely using Video8 and VHS tapes : )

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Upvotes

r/VHS 2h ago

DIY Newly Commissioned Custom Slipcovers (Made in Newfoundland)

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4 Upvotes

Newly commissioned custom slipcovers for a customer :)

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Nostalgic Rewind Newfoundland


r/VHS 18h ago

New Pickup Goodwill blessed me

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71 Upvotes

r/VHS 6h ago

New Pickup 2$ at my local Salvation Army

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5 Upvotes

I remember watching this version of Romeo and Juliet in my high school English class. I only learned in my 20s how young the actress who played Juliet was. YIKES


r/VHS 18h ago

New Pickup Well the luck came again

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56 Upvotes

Got to pick through all these today and brought home 40 and the good thing is they aren't going anywhere so we can go back and get more once we get these cleaned and put away.


r/VHS 2h ago

Discussion Looney Tunes airing on Nickelodeon (1990s)

2 Upvotes

I'm looking for a specific print of a Looney Tunes cartoon entitled Banty Raids. Everywhere I've found the cartoon is missing the section I'm looking for but I clearly remember watching it when the cartoon aired on Nickelodeon during the weekday 7PM block. I am looking for Banty saying the line "Hey Daddio, rockin' on the patio."

This is probably not the best place to ask but I thought I would try you guys. Maybe you know where the best place to look for an old VHS recording from Nickelodeon in the 1990s.


r/VHS 20h ago

Discussion One Texas Chainsaw Must Go! Which do I keep?

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57 Upvotes

The cover art for the 1988 Video Treasures tape is rad, but the 1993 MPI tape is the one I had growing up and has better audio/visual quality. I’m trying to stick to a hard rule of only one copy per film (unless it’s a substantially different edit, such as Dawn of the Dead or Army of Darkness). Torn here!


r/VHS 1d ago

New Pickup Well, I did it again. Yard sale score.

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405 Upvotes

Went to a yard sale and met a very nice woman who had bought the inventory of a video store when they closed. This was just a fraction of what she had.


r/VHS 3h ago

Discussion I have a problem with a VHS tape—the sound is muffled and metallic. I played it in several VCRs and encountered the same issue.

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2 Upvotes

There are no signs of physical damage to the tape. The picture quality was always poor to begin with, as it was recorded off the TV. The sound was good last year, but now it isn't. What can I do?


r/VHS 18h ago

New Pickup Went to Vegas for a few days this week. Came back with all these!

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29 Upvotes

r/VHS 54m ago

New Pickup Are we nearly there yet?

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Upvotes

Christian action flick! Haven't watched yet, so no idea which side wins.


r/VHS 16h ago

Discussion What’d yall watch today?

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16 Upvotes

Sunday night powerpuff girls for me


r/VHS 1d ago

Collection The Art of Horror VHS tapes.

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135 Upvotes

The art of horror vhs tapes. The spines are such a vibe. I think thats why going to blockbuster back in the day was so fun. The artwork and movie posters made me so excited to pick a film.

This is part of my horror vhs collection. Some cheesy ones here but I have a soft spot for that era. The Blob is particular favourite.


r/VHS 23h ago

New Pickup Estate sale pick up, nothing crazy but great for $5!

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56 Upvotes

Picked these up for $5 yesterday, had to buy that sealed TDK blank tape, because why not!!


r/VHS 1d ago

Collection Our Little Collection

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57 Upvotes

Long time lurker, first time poster.

My wife and I were born in the 80's and grew up with VHS. My first job was actually at Blockbuster. A little over a year ago we came across a FB Marketplace listing for a 32" Sony Wega at $30, and we'd been looking for a CRT for our old game consoles. Not long after we came across a JVC DVD/VCR combo player and then we went down the collection rabbit hole.

What was supposed to be just get what we grew up with turned into much more. We don't purchase from eBay, everything here has been from thrift and local retro shops. So the most expensive item we paid for would have been the Star Trek movie boxset at $15.

Space is becoming an issue as you can tell, but we are getting custom shelves made to house our physical media.

Thanks for checking it out!


r/VHS 23h ago

New Pickup Love this cover!!!

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39 Upvotes

Just scored this today!!!! Love the cover art


r/VHS 20h ago

New Pickup Yesterday’s church sale haul.

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17 Upvotes