My Entire DVD Collection Was Stolen Last Night (1 Viewer)

Chuck Watwood · Sep 3, 2003

I came home from work this morning, about 5:15AM and my front door was smashed in and my entire 600+ DVD collection, including many season sets of Xfiles, Sopranos,Buffy, etc. all gone. They only took my DVD's, didn't touch my HT equipment, CD's or camera equipment. I estimate approximately $13,000. I guess I am lucky that they didn't completely clean me out. I am in shock. Police weren't much help, they can't trace DVD's. Sometimes life sucks. I'll never rebuild it. I hope my insurance company will pay off. My agent seems to think so. I'll find out when I talk to the adjuster in a couple of days. I suggest home security systems for everyone. I have a salesman coming to the house tomorrow to pitch one. I'm buying. Anyone got a viscious dog for sale? I'm off now to pick up my new front door. The old one was destroyed.

Peter Apruzzese · Sep 3, 2003

That's a terrible loss, glad no one was physically harmed.

Check out the local pawn shops and/or used CD/DVD stores - maybe you'll get lucky and the thief will try to sell the collection all at once and the police can do a sting of some sort.

Page · Sep 3, 2003

Sorry for your loss. Do you live in a house, condo, apartment? The neighbors didn't notice anyone bashing in your door? Sounds like someone must have known what you had in your home before they broke in...

Tommy G · Sep 3, 2003

Wow Chuck, I feel for you man. Hopefully your homeowners will cover it all. This is the reason I keep everything in dvd profiler. People think I'm always "showing off" my dvds but it is more for me to keep track of how many I had if anything like this ever happens to me. I hope you get reimbursed.

Scott Kimball · Sep 3, 2003

*Ouch*

Hope you kept them in a database of some sort... I know I could never remember all that I have, if I had to recall from memory.

I use ReaderWare (no Mac version of DVD Profiler). Besides the list of titles, I have the total retail value at the touch of a button. The data is stored on my laptop, as well as on an offsite server... so I can access it even if the house burns down. With the $7000 +/- worth of DVDs I have, it's worth doing.

Hope you are able to revcover all you lost... over time, some titles become difficult to find.

-Scott

Cavan.B · Sep 3, 2003

What I want to know is how in the world did they move all the 600 DVD's out of your home?!?! Did they have a truck or something?! That's hard to fathom, but I'm sorry for the loss and hopefully you can rebuild. I just find it shocking they took just the DVD's and took them ALL. Hopefully they find the bastard(s).

Neil Joseph · Sep 3, 2003

I hope the insurance will at least cover most of the cost of replacement.

Patrick McCart · Sep 3, 2003

For later reference, keep your discs in binders (I have one that'll hold 200 discs, plus a pocket for inserts) and keep the cases on the shelf.

For every DVD you get, replace the real disc with AOL discs and put the real one in the binders.

Paul_Stachniak · Sep 3, 2003

Who are these friggen losers that have nothing better to do then mess up other people's lives.

I'm very sorry to hear this. Hope everything can be covered by your insurence.

Dane Marvin · Sep 3, 2003

Someone mentioned to check the pawn shops, but also run a search on E-bay for any rare titles you might have had. Check the "other auctions" of sellers who are selling those rare titles to see if they are selling an usually high number of titles that you had stolen from you.

Ryan Wishton · Sep 3, 2003

I came home from work this morning, about 5:15AM and my front door was smashed in and my entire 600+ DVD collection, including many season sets of Xfiles, Sopranos,Buffy, etc. all gone. They only took my DVD's, didn't touch my HT equipment, CD's or camera equipment. I estimate approximately $13,000. I guess I am lucky that they didn't completely clean me out. I am in shock. Police weren't much help, they can't trace DVD's. Sometimes life sucks. I'll never rebuild it. I hope my insurance company will pay off. My agent seems to think so. I'll find out when I talk to the adjuster in a couple of days. I suggest home security systems for everyone. I have a salesman coming to the house tomorrow to pitch one. I'm buying. Anyone got a viscious dog for sale? I'm off now to pick up my new front door. The old one was destroyed.

I am sorry for your misfortune... Can you think of anyone who might have done it??? Lets see!!! They only took your DVD's... That sounds like something a kid might possibly do... Or someone who just really wanted to borrow your DVD's... I mean what intelligent criminal is only going to take DVD's and leave everything else of value???

Dont point fingers at anyone unless you are sure... Another problem is sometimes you think of a person who might have done it, blame that person, but it ends up to be that the person doesnt have any clue of what your talking about and really wasnt involved...

My cousin had a similar experience... They took all the CD's but left valuables like money behind??? Never did find out who did it... Who would do that??? I guess they figured they were being nice by only stealing the DVD's...

Things like this are the reasons why I am always afraid to own things...

Once again... Sorry for your troubles... I would suggest a booby trap in your future DVD collection... Maybe some form of device if someone tries to take your collection in the future, there fingers will get blown off...

I dont condone violence... But... You can take my job... You can take my family... But, when you take my DVD collection, that means war!!! :wink:

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Dean Kousoulas · Sep 3, 2003

I really hope these bums pay for that they did. F'n losers...

Dean

Mark Cappelletty · Sep 3, 2003

Chuck,

My heart goes out to you, having had CDs and comic books stolen out of my apartment two years ago. Be vigilant with the insurance company and make sure you take pictures for reference for now on. Also, make sure you mark all of your DVDs/CDs with a sharpie with your initials. It may sound like something you did in college to prevent your roommate from making off with a CD, but at least this will help in tracking your items if they're sold to local record stores/swap meets/etc.

And Scott,

Much thanks for pointing me toward ReaderWare (I'm a Mac guy as well). I'm sure inputting all my DVDs, LDs, CDs and vinyl records (I keep my own lists) will take forever, but it will be worth it.

Adam_S · Sep 3, 2003

To add to what Patrick McCart said, keep those binders in a safe! Preferably one that's bolted to the floor from the inside of the safe. I have a cousin that had stereo equipment and CD collections stolen twice while he was a student in Springfield (SMSU), but it still surprises me that they took only your DVDs.

As an alternative to binders (believe me you probably won't like the friction affects of going in and out on your most used titles) there is the storage possibilities mentioned here I think these are better than binders because if you want any sort of order, fixed minders are a pain in the ass to reshuffle, plus reordering means more friction. :frowning:

Adam

rich_d · Sep 3, 2003

That's awful. Sorry to hear that and good luck with your insurance.

Todd Robertson · Sep 3, 2003

What I want to know is how in the world did they move all the 600 DVD's out of your home?!?! Did they have a truck or something?! That's hard to fathom,

....first...sorry to hear this but I'm happy you are unharmed. the above quote is a perfect example of why some may get ripped off. to think it's hard to steal a collection of this size is madness. many in the past have accused me of going overboard when it comes to protecting my belongings. I store my library in a walk-in clost(the vault) with an electronic lock on the "vault" door and a basic home security system. this plus my Rottweiler protects me from the crack addicts and unemployed vermin. I hope to never be home when someone attempts this. they can steal my car, my tv, my pc....but touch my family or dvd collection....get shot, then mauled.

hope you get some $ back on this. again, I'm very sorry you were invaded.

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DeanWG · Sep 3, 2003

Also sorry to hear about your loss.

I decided a few weeks ago to spend some time with my collection (about 400 right now) and see what I can do to make them traceable to some extent.

What I did is pick about 75 different titles and I did one of two things. If the disc did not have any artwork, then I placed a small sharpee dot on the disc hub. Always in the same location. For other disks, I pulled out the sleeves I wrote my initials on the back bottom area. I'm guessing no crook will take the time to check inside the sleeve.

I used the "comments" section of DVD Profiler to label which DVDs I marked, so I always have a list. As I add titles to my collection, I'll randomly add a couple more.

Foolproof? Obviously not. But it may go far in recognizing my collection if a crook takes it and stores it somewhere before getting busted for something else.

Ted Todorov · Sep 3, 2003

I mean what intelligent criminal is only going to take DVD's and leave everything else of value???

Unfortunately for some of us, our DVD collections are the most valuable thing we have (of the movable variety, anyway).

Look at Chuck's case: 600+ DVDs. Lets presume that he had no $300 OOP Criterions or other similar gems. Lets indeed price his DVDs at the absurdly low value of $10 each. That adds up to $6000 -- very likely a lot more than the resale value of his home theater equipment or anything else in the house that did not require a truck to move away.

Considering that criminals are usually quite dumb, the choice was not a bad one at all.

Good thing Chuck has insurance -- as a renter I don't. All the "renter's insurance" sales blurbs I've seen were useless to me, because the caps on what can be covered were well bellow the value of my DVDs, CDs, books, computer & HT equipment (Example: $2000 cap on all your electronic equipment -- clearly these jokers have never heard of computer professionals or HT enthusiasts). I'd loved to get real insurance, but it seems that until I buy a place, none is on offer.

Ted

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DaViD Boulet · Sep 3, 2003

Chuck,

I feel for you. We've got a security system but that's not a gaurantee either. We had folks break in once at my parents's house (when I lived there) and they took some items but left the CD collection alone...which was such a relief as I had many out-of-print items that would have been impossible to replace.

They'll likely try to pawn them.

Call every pawn shop you can find in 100 miles and let them know. Pawn shops sometimes work with the police to help stolen items get tracked and to help identify the theives.

Also, check ebay to see if suddenly the same seller is posting a slew of titles that you had in your collection. If you see any odd-ball titles that could help you identify? Not sure what ebay would do, but just pulling at straws.

Hang in there!

Good luck!

Scott Kimball · Sep 3, 2003

I'm not at all surprised that the DVDs were targeted.

Even 600 discs are relatively small and very light. You could fit all 600 in two or three U-Haul moving boxes.

And, they're easy to sell, without drawing a lot of attention.

Not huge money in used DVDs, but for a teen (the probably culprit), it's easy money with little risk.

-Scott

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