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DVD Sets depreciating in value (1 Viewer)

Bradskey

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DVDs and Blu-rays have never been investments, or even very collectible. And I've bought thousands of them. For me the value is in wanting to own the content they contain. Economically most of their value is in the "new release" phase of an initial 30-60 days or so and then a long tail of nominal incremental sales. But the reality is as a physical good they are a cheap near-worthless commodity, and particularly for those published by the big studios, their scarcity is artificial. The content still exists somewhere and can be replicated again anytime there is sufficient demand. Which in most cases there won't be.

I recall a story a few years about truckloads of thousands of WB DVDs, mostly old TV shows, that remained unsold. Dukes of Hazard, Magnum PI and such. WB paid some vendor to destroy them all, and then I think there was a lawsuit when they all started showing up on eBay. But presumably a lot of these DVD sets were still profitable for the companies that cranked them out by the droves, even if there was a landfill of unsold stocks of worthless plastic laying around somewhere.

Unlike vinyl though these disc formats, and DVD in particular, are not durable. I've had a few pressed DVDs that have failed with age, mostly related to those that were defectively manufactured for WB from 2006-2008, but a few others. So within a decade or so the longevity of any DVD becomes suspect due to rot. Blu-rays are better in this regard, with better coatings and a supposed shelf life of up to 100 years maybe.

I've been buying discs long enough to see a few sets go OOP and command wildly inflated used prices, maybe a few hundred dollars at most. Often these were fairly old or early releases, and usually there is a newer improved release a few years later if there was really any demand for it. Then the prices for the old release will drop accordingly. A lot of really old DVD releases were also not anamorphic or had awful letterboxing, etc. At this point a lot of stuff that has gone OOP is also showing up on streaming services. And even when it hasn't, the demand for physical media in general is dropping and so are prices for "rare" sets. Only so many people still want this stuff physically. If anything I think some of the "rare" discs I'm still looking to acquire will become more reasonable, or sellers with any sense will be more inclined to accept my reasonable offers.
 

Stephen Bowie

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Even if your local library system is not a robust supplier of DVDs or Blu-rays, it probably has some version of Interlibrary Loan that you can use to request circulating items from other library systems (at least in within the US).

It can be cumbersome and take a while to receive your item, but I've used it to reel in some surprisingly rare imports and OOP discs, as well as a steady stream of DVDs (and books) that I just don't want to buy. Recently I got my hands on the '80s Casablanca series this way, after noticing that the Olive DVD set had abruptly dropped out of print and gotten expensive on the secondary market.

The catch is that there are a lot of titles this won't work on because no participating libraries have a copy they'll share. As a rule of thumb, find the disc you're looking for in worldcat.org, and if more than 10 libraries have a copy, you'll probably get it. Fewer than 10 and you may be wasting your time. Most of the Warner Archive discs are in enough libraries for ILL to work, for instance, but I haven't had much success with Sony, MGM, or Fox MODs.
 

AndyMcKinney

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I recall a story a few years about truckloads of thousands of WB DVDs, mostly old TV shows, that remained unsold. Dukes of Hazard, Magnum PI and such. WB paid some vendor to destroy them all, and then I think there was a lawsuit when they all started showing up on eBay. But presumably a lot of these DVD sets were still profitable for the companies that cranked them out by the droves, even if there was a landfill of unsold stocks of worthless plastic laying around somewhere.

I think what you're talking about is the infamous incident where WB paid someone to destroy a bunch of DVDs (and some blu-rays, too) and instead of doing that, this vendor sold the stock to Big Lots (who didn't know they were on the receiving end of a shady deal). There were threads on here and DVDTalk (and other places) about what was being found at Big Lots (and for what prices). Mostly TV stuff, some things that were even hard to find. Looney Tunes Golden Collection sets, Night Court, Smallville, Adventures of Superman, Flinstones (and other H-B stuff), Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, Wild Wild West, Wonder Woman, ER, Popeye and also titles for studios which WB was merely the distributor for, such as HBO (Tales from the Crypt, Tracey Takes On...) and BBC Video (I know of at least Claws of Axos being spotted).

Most of these titles were about $6.00 to $10. each in the initial "wave", and nearer the end, a lot of sets were going as cheap as $3.00 each. I know I bought a bunch of stuff (though never saw some of the titles other people did) and I remember there being a major stink raised over this by WB. When this stuff first started showing up, I bellieve most people thought WB was liquidating stuff to Big Lots, not that it was destined for the landfill.

Now, since this stuff was dirt cheap in some cases, there were speculators who bought lots of stuff which did end up appearing on eBay (those Popeye sets, for instance), but that was after it had gone to Big Lots first.
 

The Obsolete Man

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I look at these sets the same way I look at my comic collection... worthless to anyone but me, and if I resell them it will likely be for pennies.

Sure, there's probably some valuable ones I could make money on if I tried, but the bulk of them are essentially worthless. And I'm okay with that.
 

Bradskey

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I think what you're talking about is the infamous incident where WB paid someone to destroy a bunch of DVDs (and some blu-rays, too) and instead of doing that, this vendor sold the stock to Big Lots (who didn't know they were on the receiving end of a shady deal).

Yes I'm sure that is the same incident, I didn't recall all the particulars. My roundabout point is that the physical discs, packaging and all, have virtually no real intrinsic economic value. They have simply been a medium of exchange or delivery in order to grant a license to view digital content in a world traditionally accustomed to physical purchases and possessions. The real economic value of DVDs and Blu-rays mostly existed as a combination of artificial scarcity (or lack thereof) and newness and exclusivity upon initial release. While retailers might maintain prices on copies of some of these DVD sets at a high level for years in some cases, the overall trend was that the prices were gradually discounted and the sales of any individual title would decline to a modest level fairly quickly after initial release.

That's not of course to say that disc-based media has no value at all. To me the value is in that I can both license the content and also have it in medium that allows me to retain control in a fashion very similar to physical possessions. That does include the right to sell it to someone else, even if there is little to be gained. But the real value is that random X streaming service or digital copy service can't arbitrarily decide that i can no longer access the content I "paid for", either because their own licenses with the content owners have expired or because the distribution and delivery technology has been deprecated. We've seen both of those scenarios already.

I don't insist on the advantages of physical media for all content. I do streaming, I rent streams occasionally, and I even "buy" streaming digital copies if it's convenient. Usually these are new release films and such, which I'm fairly certain I won't care about watching more than once anyway. For my physical collection I do of course "format shift" it all to digital copies on a NAS, as it really is not reasonable to expect a customer who has purchased thousands of single and mult-disc sets to dig through his bins and piles of discs every time he wants to casually see something he remembers he owns, but may not remember which box it is in now.
 

Lecagr

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I'm concerned as well about the problem with pressed DVD's and disc rot. Fortunately at this time all my DVD's are playing fine, but one DVD set in particular, my DVD set of Space 1999, some of those discs look pretty bad and show obvious signs of disc rot. The discs still play fine in my DVD player but I wonder how long they will continue to play considering how bad the playing surfaces look.

DVD-R's are supposedly a problem too, because the purple dye layer on the discs is said to dry up over time and recorded material on the discs will eventually become unplayable. Not good.
 

JQuintana

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Not good for sure, but I'm sure most folks didn't or don't believe these discs of plastic and glue were meant to last a lifetime.
 

Lecagr

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I think in most cases, though, supply is going to far exceed demand.

About the only discs worth anything these days are ones that are rare or have gone OOP. Occasionally I'll find such a disc in a pawn shop, buy it and flip it, but otherwise, anything else should simply be bought for your (or someone else's) entertainment only, not because you think it'll increase in (or maintain) monetary value.

You make a valid point but I do believe that there is a buyer for everything, the right individual just has to come along.

Things I have collected over the years are for my entertainment, I have the stuff because I like it. Having said that, I do have some interesting collections and if at some point decide to sell some or all of it, I'd have to see what the market value would be. I'm sure I could make some money if I sold my collections but no I don't expect to get rich from it.
 

Lecagr

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Not good for sure, but I'm sure most folks didn't or don't believe these discs of plastic and glue were meant to last a lifetime.

DVD's aren't expected to last a lifetime but should last longer than they do. What is the current life expectancy of DVD's? About 10 or 15 years? That isn't very long. I have some VHS cassettes that are over 30 years old and still play perfect like they are new. In some ways, VHS is better than DVD because the good quality tapes seem to last longer.
 

JQuintana

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Just by the nature of the materials used to make them. Not to mention the environments they are stored in. Plastics, glue, humidity, dry air, heat, cold, it's all a recipe for short shelf lives.
 

Lecagr

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Why not? I have almost 40 year old CDs that play just fine. Why wouldn't I expect the same from a DVD?

It could be that CD's & DVD's that are manufactured with better quality materials tend to last longer. And it also depends on how the discs are handled and stored. If the discs are handled carefully and stored in a cool/dry location they should last longer too.

That Space 1999 DVD set I have, A & E released it, they probably used the cheapest quality discs they could find because the disc rot on those discs is pretty bad. Some look worse than others, but all of them show some form of disc rot.
 

Gary OS

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Why not? I have almost 40 year old CDs that play just fine. Why wouldn't I expect the same from a DVD?

Exactly. When I began purchasing DVDs in earnest I was in my 40’s and certainly expected them to last as long as I do! At least 35 to 40 years. If that’s not gonna happen then I for one feel somewhat cheated on the product and what we were originally lead to believe about their longevity.
 

JQuintana

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Where did any studio or movie disc maker state in writing that discs would last "X" amount of years? I know of NONE. So how can you feel "cheated"? It was and is a gamble to own these.
 

BobO'Link

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I guess you're just too young to have seen the demonstrations in the early days of CD where the salesman would take a disc, drop it on the ground, slide it around a bit with his foot, and put it in the player where it'd magically still work. That was a very common sales technique in the early days of CD to demonstrate its durability and superiority to vinyl records.

I was in a store when a salesman did such a demonstration and the disc failed. He'd ground it just a bit too much/often. He was quite redfaced and rather speechless. Needless to say, that customer didn't make a purchase that day.

All along manufacturers and pundits have claimed life spans of 50+ years for commercially produced discs. Sure there were exceptions and discs that suffered from "rot" but they were few and relatively far between. Like Gary, I'm old enough that that's good enough and makes them "lifetime" for me.
 

JQuintana

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I'm almost 55 so I've been around the electronics block. :)

But I don't recall every reading about or seeing disc makers say that DVD's will survive 50+ years or any amount of years for that matter. Users on forums have claimed it maybe, but not manufacturers that I ever saw.
 

Gary OS

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Where did any studio or movie disc maker state in writing that discs would last "X" amount of years? I know of NONE. So how can you feel "cheated"? It was and is a gamble to own these.

Kindly note the wording in my post. Where did I state that studios or 'movie disc makers' [your wording, not mine] stated that dvds would last so many years? I did not state that so don't argue a straw man with me. But there were many comments, from multiple online sites, that these discs could be expected to last anywhere from 50 to 100 years. It's axiomatic so I'm not going to argue it with you.
 

jcroy

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Kindly note the wording in my post. Where did I state that studios or 'movie disc makers' [your wording, not mine] stated that dvds would last so many years? I did not state that so don't argue a straw man with me. But there were many comments, from multiple online sites, that these discs could be expected to last anywhere from 50 to 100 years. It's axiomatic so I'm not going to argue it with you.

I suspect the key is finding what is the original source of this "50 to 100 years" assertion, which multiple online sites/articles have been "parroting" over all these years.
 

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