Have you run into any Facebook shares recently, informing you that you may have a goldmine sitting in a box in your attic? Rumours have been spreading that if you kept all of your beloved Disney VHS tapes and any of them sport the legendary black diamond logo indicating the film is a “Walt Disney Classic”, you can list it online for sale at eye-popping prices.
In fact, as of today, April 30th, a copy of The Jungle Book has been listed on eBay at $1000 US dollars – plus your shipping. Oof.
But before you sprint to the closet to dig these classics out for your own eBay store, it never hurts to do a little research. After all, it’s easy to list anything online for whatever price you feel the item is worth. Toast with interesting markings in the sears has wound up online in the past with price tags exceeding twenty grand.
Snopes.com, an excellent fact-checking resource online, posted this article in 2016 to say if you’re thinking about using black-diamond VHS tapes to make a fortune, don’t get your hopes up just yet.
If you don’t trust Snopes for some reason, a quick search within eBay’s completed listings shows that most people are only paying close to around $15-$20 dollars for these classics, likely out of desperation to complete their personal collection if they can’t find certain titles locally. Here in Fredericton, you can find lots of your favourite Disney VHS tapes for around $0.99 at used goods stores that accept items by donation, or sometimes at local pawnshops for $3.00 – $5.00 if they’re buying good-condition VHS tapes.
Quite a difference from $1000 or more, isn’t it?
So, if you’re a collector looking at these prices, don’t feel discouraged – you can likely complete your entire black-diamond Disney VHS collection for a quarter of the price of a single listing on eBay, just by shopping around locally!
However, one can never predict this kind of market. Who knows, maybe someday, your Disney VHS collection may be worth something special! If you have some functional titles kicking around and they’re not taking up too much space, there’s no harm in holding onto them and checking out the market every now and then. VHS tapes themselves aren’t the best medium and aren’t likely to be worth tens of thousands of dollars any time soon, but in this case, it could all be in that oh-so famous name.
Do you still have The Lion King or Pinocchio or something equally awesome on VHS somewhere? Feel free to brag about your collection in the comments below.
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