Disney Treasures: Chronological Donald 3 & 4, why "sold out" vs volumes 1 & 2? (1 Viewer)

Greetings all,

I have been relatively inactive in regards to posting in this forum and in purchasing of DVD's for a while so my question may seem to be outdated, because it is!

I purchased most of the Disney Treasure cartoons as they became available until a few years ago. I recently became interested in "catching up" where possible. I own all animated Treasures except Chronological Donald 3 & 4.

To my surprise #3 & 4 are only available on eBay or from rare DVD dealers on Amazon, etc., and the prices average over $150 for #3, and $90 for vol 4, yet #1 and 2 are still available from standard suppliers for near normal prices of $25 - $30. (I may well purchase 3 & 4 from one of these sources since I have not found any encouraging info regarding any sort of reissue in the near future)

I am not an avid collector of Disney animation, so I do not know why 1 & 2 would not be as popular from the collector's perspective - they are all limited editions, so I would think they would be in similar demand. (I purchased the ones I have mostly for nostalgic reasons - being in the 60+ yo crowd, I saw many of these watching "Disneyland" on Sunday evenings during my youth.).

Any information to appease my curiousity will be greatly appreciated!

Disney, in it's infinite wisdom, had an extremely low production run of these two volumes, thus causing them to sell out quickly. Disney has not started a new production run and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one. These are not the only Treasury titles that were low-balled in their production runs, thus causing almost instant collectables. The Patrick McGoohan SCAREROW OF ROMNEY MARSH is one of the most desired titles that costs a mint on ebay.

If the cartoons are your main interest, as opposed to the package, volume 3 has been release in R2 in France and Germany, in what seems to be general release. The DVDs should be the same except they don't have the tin, nor booklet/postcards.

I have bought all of the Donalds as region 1. I understand that the R2's do not have Der Fuhrers Face on it. In Germany (look at Amazon.de - "donald duck dvd box"), one can get in a metal box Donald 1-3. but no sign of Donald 4. Likewise one can get in Germany "Inspector 2) which was never released in the US as a single,

On amazon,de search for " Walt Disney Kostbarkeiten", you will see Donald 3. One can also get the complete Goofy - search for "Goofy" ("Goofys gesammelte Geschichten"). Funny with Amazon.de, there doesn't seem to be one search ("suche") to get all 3 things

Just remember that postage from amazon.de (Germany) to the USA is about $40 to start. if you are multi-region enabled it might be worth it, but if you are not, buying the Walt Disney Treasures tins domestically at the jacked up prices would cost about the same as buying them from across the pond.

According to ultimatedisney.com , Disney published 50,000 tins of Chronological Donald 3 and 39,500 tins of Chronological 4. Compare that to 165,000 tins of volume 1 and 125,000 tins for volume 2. Resellers gobbled up multiple copies of 3 and 4 to hasten them both of out-of-print so they could jack up the price. That's why 3 and 4 are plentiful in the reseller's market at amazon and ebay.

Volume 3 and 4 have been out of print at the Disney Movie Club site for over a year now.

Thanks to all for the info. I didn't realize that Disney released such drastically different quantities (especially for a character as popular as Donald).

I think I will take the plunge and buy from one of the Amazon vendors. I noticed that a couple of them sold out of their remaining copies in the last few days! Might be time to sell my 1998 copy of "Little Shop" to help offset the cost, I'd much rather own the "Ducks" .

Originally Posted by Richard--W

Just remember that postage from amazon.de (Germany) to the USA is about $40 to start.

Click to expand...

I find that $40 to be a bit high. I know that various people have order the big Laurel & Hardy box from Amazon-UK which was sent via Amazon-de was circa $50 which included postage & DVDs. I searched the Amazon.de site and the postage seems to be circa 15 Euros. Best way to to make an order and see what the actual postage is before you finalize the order.