Thrift Store Adventures Volume 5: VHS Edition

The last few themed installments of Thrift Store Adventures turned out better than expected, so I’d like to ride the coattails of Ryan’s review of V/H/S with a discussion of VHS tapes, most commonly found in thrift stores, along with used bookstores and garage sales. To be realistic, VHS tapes are outdated, bulky, you can degrade the tape by rewinding it improperly, you can degrade the tape by watching it too many times, magnets don’t really work well around them and they’re afraid of water. Why watch something on VHS when you can watch it on Bluray? Well, “it’s not available on Bluray or even DVD” is the best answer to that. I collect VHS tapes because they’re cheap, and because I have a fondness for 90s anime. Most have made it to DVD, although when a production studio closes the distribution rights it owned may not be immediately available. Some are formally out of print, or in that græy area until another studio comes along to re-re-release the anime on Bluray. It’s an innocent “thrill of the hunt” kind of collection, where I’ll occasionally look through a thrift store’s VHS selection and see if there’s anything I recognize or anything that looks cool, and might only pay more for something I clearly owned or wanted to own. Here are seven examples of the kinds of tapes I’d buy:

Thrift Store Adventures Volume 4: Bellevue is Crazy

The first two Thrift Store Adventures took place over several visits to various thrift stores, because frankly, there just wasn’t enough oddity to fit into one occurrence. Recently, I started taking a writing class in Bellevue. There are many Bellevues across the United States and the world, perhaps most commonly, the Bellevue Hospital Center. The Bellevue in my mind is where I received my higher education and met many of my friends, but is also a rich, snotty part of the greater Seattle area. I stopped in at the Bellevue Goodwill twice, and each time found enough content for an article, so here are fourteen – rather than seven – crazy things I came across in those two thrift store adventures:

Thrift Store Adventures Volume 3: Seven Favorite Finds

For the this installment of Thrift Store Adventures, I thought it might be nice to show why I enjoy going to thrift stores. It’s not always for the lulz. Sometimes you see some really cool stuff. Here are seven of my favorite things I came across in my thrift store adventures:

Hot Wheel’s Faster Than Ever 2011: Volkswagen Type 181

After I finished my review of the Volkswagen Fall Fling 2012, I rewarded my efforts by adding a Volkswagen car to my Hot Wheels (and Matchbox) collection. I still have my complete childhood collection, which ranged from mainly funny cars to some real life cars, so after I gained an appreciation for muscle cars and in particular the old American iron thanks to my dad, I started collecting them again with a focus on pre-1972 muscle cars. Here’s a review of that toy, since I figured it’d be a fun diversion from the academic reviews we normally provide.

Thrift Store Adventures Volume 2: Now in 3D

Last week, Thrift Store Adventures taught you seven things about thrift stores. This week, we’ll cover seven more weird things you could come across in your own thrift store adventures:

Thrift Store Adventures Volume 1: Only in America

In the past week, I’ve been to more thrift stores than some people have gone to in an entire lifetime, and here are seven things I learned: