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The reduction of my optical disc collection has started today! (1 Viewer)

Robert Crawford

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I've procrastinated for a very long time to reduce the duplicates of my almost 10,000 optical disc collection. However, the time has come for me to start the inevitable in order to keep my collection to a more manageable quantity. It simply does not make sense to keep duplicate titles spread across 2-3 different video formats on disc. I have to go against my natural squirrel mentality when it comes to my movie collection in order to create room in my household while still enjoying the benefits of having a large movie collection.

It's going to hurt, but it has to be done as I continue to add on new titles each week to my collection. It just doesn't make sense to keep 5-6 different releases of Casablanca or The Wizard of Oz for example. This reduction will likely take me several weeks to complete including the disposition of the excess inventory.

Anybody else have a similar task to do?
 

jcroy

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(Silly question).

What % of the collection would you estimate are:

- impulse/blind buys ?
- unopened (still sealed in plastic wrap)?
- never watched once ?
 

Robert Crawford

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jcroy said:
(Silly question).

What % of the collection would you estimate are:

- impulse/blind buys ?
- unopened (still sealed in plastic wrap)?
- never watched once ?
Are you kidding? Do you want me to go in full depression just thinking about those percentages? :)
 

rsmithjr

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Yes but I am not sure what to do.

The LD's are all so well packaged. The Blu-ray's are often archival quality of the film itself, dumped into the cheapest packaging some studio bean counter could imagine.

I am keeping the LD's. I dump the DVD's as soon as I can (never liked the format), and watching the Blu-ray's.

I have about 1800 total and am trying to tell myself that the collection is "complete", which it almost is, by my own definition. Less than 10 critical titles (Porgy and Bess and Around the World in 80 Days, plus a newly mastered R&H set sans the blue would go a long way). I am buying a lot of Criterion and almost no new studio films, had it with CGI action pictures.

I have to notice that I am in a situation of diminishing returns.
 

jcroy

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Robert Crawford said:
Are you kidding? Do you want me to go in full depression just thinking about those percentages? :)
Touche. :)

My percentages would probably be just as bad.

(Except for the unopened part, which would be 0% for me. I have an obsessive habit of checking every newly purchased dvd/bluray/cd disc on the computer for bad sectors, as soon as I get home from the store/mailbox).
 

jcroy

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rsmithjr said:
I have to notice that I am in a situation of diminishing returns.
I think I'm pretty much reaching the "burnout" stage too. (I only started buying a lot of dvds/blurays in 2011).

I was more into tv shows, than movies. Initially I thought tv season sets for $10-$15 each (or less) seemed like a great deal, until I realized it takes a significant time commitment to finish watching 15 to 25 45-minute episodes per set.
 

Dave B Ferris

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To create room *and* maintain your squirrel mentality -Have you considered buying various configurations of empty cases to house multiple versions of the same films?I'll cite an example:Remember the John Frankenheimer DVD box set; 4-films each housed in a slim DVD case? All four films are now also available on BR. I converted each slim DVD case to a slim-double DVD case, so each case now holds the DVD and the BR. The BR covers, folded, slide neatly into the box.
 

Vic Pardo

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When I retire (next year hopefully), I plan to start weeding out my VHS collection first, since that takes up so much space.

I'll worry about the discs after I've made headway with the tapes.

I would love to find a place to send my tapes, but nobody seems to want them anymore. I sure wish there was a VHS preservation archive. If I could find someone to fund a space to store and maintain tapes, I'd start one myself. There are so many films/TV shows/alternate versions that are only available on VHS.
 

cineMANIAC

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Robert Crawford said:
Anybody else have a similar task to do?

I'm actually doing the exact opposite: adding duplicates. If I had to divulge a reason why I'm doing this I would say it's for the packaging. I'm now heavily into collecting steelbooks so have added a few select titles to my existing collection. For instance, I had the regular version of the film DRIVE but got rid of it for a French steelbook and plan on buying the film again at least 3 more times in the next month or so because of various upcoming foreign reissues. Don't ask me why, it's a collector's thing :)

I also have several duplicates that have nothing to do with packaging. I've got a couple of versions of Motel Hell (Region locked and region free, different extras, etc). I haven't reached the point where I have to purge my collection of extraneous stuff but if I keep this up I'll get there very quickly :lol:
 

Mike Frezon

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Robert:

Do you have a plan for what you're going to do with the discs when you complete the purge?

Forum sale, garage sale, relatives, sell to a retailer/e-tailer, pawn shop, GoodWill/Salvation Army...

That part of the task can almost be as daunting as the purge itself.

Good luck. It's a difficult process all around.
 

Alan Tully

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I've taken tons of discs to the local charity shop. The amount of work involved in trying to sell them is just not worth the returns...& at least they're doing some good then.

...& you can't even give away VHS's these days. It's a big bin bag & down to the tip!
 

Ruz-El

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I'm about to do the same thing as a winter project since we get 8 months of the f**king snow up here in Canukland. I'm not married to any particular release, so while I'll be setting some discs aside to flip as used titles, some DVD's or Blu's, depending on which one has the prettier packaging, will get consolidated into one case if their are special features to be lost. It's a good way to free up shelf space and keep all the content. You can usually cram two discs onto one hub with damaging anything. :D
 

jcroy

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Billy Batson said:
I've taken tons of discs to the local charity shop. The amount of work involved in trying to sell them is just not worth the returns...& at least they're doing some good then.
For the most part. Selling old movies is largely an exercise in futility these days.

I just give away old stuff to local friends or family. Whatever remaining stuff they don't even want, I'll just drop it off at a nearby thrift shop (like the Salvation Army, Goodwill, etc ...).
 

CraigF

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If it's about saving shelf space:

I have been putting multiple discs in the same package for years. I keep the best/nicest package. Only if packages can't be combined do I keep both, or much more rarely, when a package is just too IMO "nice" to not keep.

And by "not keep", I don't mean throw away, I just mean I put them out of sight (compacted) in the basement. I don't know why I do this because: ...

don't know how it is in the U.S., but DVDs have virtually no value here, unless something rare and in demand. But 99.9% are essentially worthless because of the high quantity of illegitimate copies, and because of the relatively high cost of shipping in/from Canada for small items for non-business (i.e. small quantity) users. Makes it very hard to find a buyer, almost has to be local and/or someone who buys a large quantity. You practically have to go to flea markets etc., or else sell for "nothing" to a pawn shop or used disc store or a flea market vendor. Selling "one-offs" on craigslist (and similar here) is really not worth the time unless for a bulk purchase.

Anyway, that's why I keep them, they (DVDs) really don't take up much extra space, if any. I have all sorts of ways I combine the discs into one case. It's rare that I can't do it; large digibooks and Elite cases with a bunch of floppy pages are pretty much the only exceptions I can think of.

Two extra DVDs with protection easily fit in a standard Elite case, and usually three if you want to get a bit adventurous. Obviously the same applies to DVD cases, and sometimes I lean to keeping them rather than the BD case if there are worthwhile (DVD-case-sized) inserts and booklets (much more common back then). Also a standard Elite BD case cover insert easily fits into a standard Amaray DVD case without getting creased/damaged, but not vice versa, so there's that consideration too.

Anyway, I have overall managed to not increase my shelf storage requirements for a few years with this "compacting", even though I have accumulated several hundred more discs in that time.

TV on DVD discs do suck up a lot of shelf space, there was a lot of wasteful packaging (in shelf-width and materials) in that genre for years. If space ever got to the point where I had to buy more shelves (quite expensive for the ones I use) or similar, then I would rip the TV on DVDs to HDD, since they would yield the most shelf space retrieval for me per unit of "work". That would probably work out to ~$0.25 per double-sided DVD, at HDD prices now, and would fit in my palm. Not the same for me though, I like to look through my "library" and more often than not I pick stuff out just because seeing its package while browsing stirred some memory. Looking through a database doesn't do that, for me. I also prefer flipping through paper catalogs, and physical books too.

Edit: I see Russell G echoed a lot of my thoughts while my fingers were being verbose...
 

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Robert Crawford said:
Are you kidding? Do you want me to go in full depression just thinking about those percentages? :)
YES: Work through it--
Over on BR.com there's a bit of a cold culture-war among those trying to counsel the Criterion fanboys that, no matter how much you "love" the label, or feel that it's "teaching" you about film history like a devoted professor, you don't have to buy every single release the week it opens.
They get rather riled, in fact, when you compare it to a mild form of psychological addiction, more like chocolate or shopping rather than drugs or gambling, but still a disease, with all the symptoms intact. (Question 1: Do you feel friends "interfere" when they tell you to give it up?)

As for me, I don't keep three copies of anything. (Unless you count Star Wars, since I had to keep the Limited Theatrical edition and the Blu set dropped the ball by not including Empire of Dreams.)
For me, it's all about Upgrade: I set out to own one perfect copy of every movie I like, and if a studio wants to put out a more perfect version, bring it on.
 

Ejanss

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jcroy said:
For the most part. Selling old movies is largely an exercise in futility these days.

I just give away old stuff to local friends or family. Whatever remaining stuff they don't even want, I'll just drop it off at a nearby thrift shop (like the Salvation Army, Goodwill, etc ...).


The bottom seems to have dropped out of the "Sell your disks back to Amazon" market for DVD's, so I've had to get creative:
Last Christmas, when the 3D version came out, and I now had the current "ultimate" version of Wizard of Oz, I gave the old 2D 70th Ann. Blu version to family who'd just bought their new player but didn't have any Blu disks yet, and it got a hearty reception. (That and an unwanted copy of Sherlock Holmes 2 I'd gotten for free in a Warner survey, and wouldn'tcha know, that was one of their favorites, too.)
I used to donate my old upgraded DVD's to the library for a $5 "charity" tax-deduction, but they just got a big donation from the town's hallowed old downtown video-rental closing, so now I have a big pile of "free" DVD's that I let friends rummage through whenever they visit. We also have Freecycle.org in town, and you'd be surprised just how many local strangers want a copy of an old favorite DVD that's since been upgraded. :)
 

Michel_Hafner

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Have very few duplicates beyond HD-DVD vs BD but am running out of shelve space anyway. Bought two new cupboards but have to put them together first before I can use them. Should keep me going another 1-2 years. :)
 

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