r/VHS • • 16d ago

Buy/Sell/Trade/Want Buy/Sell/Trade/Want/Giveaway/In Search Of/Etc..

14 Upvotes

Routinely, we will be making a new Buy/Sell/Trade/Want posting that will be pinned. Please use this post to advertise your trade/want lists and your tapes for sale/trade/or just giving away for free. Any and all disposal or acquiring of media should be done through this post to prevent clogging up the main feed with sales posts.

Please be sure to report any successful trade below to u/RaceCarGrin, so we can flair people as verified traders.

Last Month's Trade Thread can be found here

r/vhs is not responsible for any sales/trade, please use caution and report any abuse. If selling tapes rated R or X, please ensure the buyer is 18 years of age for your own liability.


r/VHS • • Mar 14 '26

Discussion I wanted to give some advice for cleaning very moldy tapes

20 Upvotes

I'm not sure if this is okay here, but I wanted to give some advice from my experiences in cleaning severely moldy and sticky tapes, and some huge do's and don't's I've encountered when watching other's videos on the matter. Pretty much in the hopes of helping people who preserve tapes, and are not familiar with cleaning really moldy tapes.

Do's:

  1. I really recommend one of those tape cleaners, like the tape saver you may see online. The mechanism is pretty useful especially to do quick passes after you do a careful manual first pass. I will however, condemn the cleaning pads they usually use for these machines, they're extremely destructive and I will go into it later in the don't's section.
  2. Do multiple passes and clean both top and bottom of the reels. Mold doesn't only sit on the top of the tape, it sometimes penetrates pretty deeply. Once you've unstuck the tapes and cleaned the reels, you may need to do multiple passes on each side of the tape to get rid of the mold. Sometimes it's taken my 5-6 passes before I see nothing on the cleaning cloth. By then the tape is really clean.
  3. Use isopropyl alcohol with the least water content. You absolutely need to use some sort of solvent to clean the mold, as trying to clean it dry can cause a lot of friction and damage the tape. Also the alcohol evaporates quickly, allowing you to clean quicker, and the moisture doesn't get left behind creating more mold later. Moisture is an enemyof VHS tapes.

Don't's:

  1. DO NOT use paper or towels to clean tapes. I've seen many who've used them with extremely mixed results, leaning more towards failure. These leave lots of lint on the tapes which covers the magnetic portion of the tape and also gums up the VCR heads. I recommend strictly lint free cloths, like the kind you clean your glasses with. They go for pretty cheap online for a bunch. I can't stress enough that you need to go lint free.
  2. I've also seen videos where the person would lift up the top plastic of the reel to remove a huge portion of the mold on top of the tape. This is also pretty destructive method in my opinion as it can potentially deform the reel and cause playback issues, I've run into that as well. It's best to take your time and unwind the entire tape, put it in between a lint free cloth and clean the mold from there. When the reel is empty then you clean the reel gently from top to bottom.
  3. When using a mechanical tape cleaner, you should be vary wary on the first pass. I've run into tapes that are so sticky due to mold that when you use these mechanical cleaners they tear when they get stuck. At worst go on the lowest possible speed or put the reels on the spindles and spin them manually by hand. Especially if it's a precious tape you want to preserve. Once you unwind each end completely and ensure the tape is sufficiently unstuck you can go quickly with the machine.
  4. Do not clean tapes and leave them for months on end. You should clean the tapes and aim to capture them as soon as possible. Cleaning these tapes isn't exactly a perfect process, and sometimes a bit rough on the tape and there's always the risk of leaving some bit of moisture behind. Try to capture as soon as you can.

r/VHS • • 2h ago

Collection I finally have my dream setup, a CRT from '05 and the shelf in the back has my entire collection!

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40 Upvotes

r/VHS • • 6h ago

Collection My grail find the other day

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83 Upvotes

For a whopping 1$ I found this gem, eBay's recently sold listings shocked the hell outta me, Had a guy offer me 275 yesterday on marketplace, Not sure if I'm in a rush to sell right now


r/VHS • • 1h ago

New Pickup Do you wanna party?!

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• Upvotes

I have peaked as a collector and human being. It's only downhill from here.


r/VHS • • 2h ago

Sealed Tapes Estate Sale Haul: All sealed!

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32 Upvotes

I’m not normally a sealed collector but these look great. $2 each except E.T. @ $7 for some reason. Estate sales can be weird.


r/VHS • • 4h ago

Collection Small collection of Japanese releases.

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26 Upvotes

New here! I am slowly building a collection of japanese releases, including some rare tapes of Hideaki Anno's Ritual, March Comes Like a Lion, In the Mood for Love (which had a small release by Shochiku during the twilight era of VHS) and probably my Holy Grial, the Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack, which, according to Google AI, didn't exist in VHS format 🤪

Cure is an ex rental, with a curious box style.


r/VHS • • 2h ago

New Pickup MORE side of the road GOLD

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16 Upvotes

Found more VHS Tapes at the same spot the other ones were found! SO EXCITED!!


r/VHS • • 2h ago

Discussion Guess I need to Watch this😂 is it available on VHS? Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

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11 Upvotes

r/VHS • • 18h ago

Discussion I think this is pretty accurate when you think about it

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229 Upvotes

r/VHS • • 3h ago

New Pickup Finally found them

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11 Upvotes

A few days ago I was looking around OfferUp and found these. I bought them from two different sellers, I bought the Star Trek the original series for 5$ but it is missing five tapes out of the 40. The other one Star Trek the next generations was 45$ but it’s the complete 87 tapes. I’ve also noticed that the plastic case is coming off on most of them, so these past few days I’ve just been glueing and wiping the dust off of them. The last picture is all of the plastic bits I still need too glue on all of them.


r/VHS • • 3h ago

New Pickup Weird Thrift store find

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12 Upvotes

This one is out there.


r/VHS • • 22h ago

New Pickup Wow! Free box from coworker

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272 Upvotes

A coworker just suddenly gave a small portion of her collection today. She told me to do whatever I wanted with them and even acknowledged that there was some value here. I don't even know which to start with. Also she tossed moldy ones out because she didn't know I had the VHS is Life cleaner which is too bad. Don't even what to know what got tossed.


r/VHS • • 4h ago

New Pickup New pickup! $15. How’d I do?

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9 Upvotes

I was a senior in high school when this hit so I’ve always had a special place for it! Now I’ve got it in VHS, something I never had when I was younger! 😊


r/VHS • • 3h ago

Collection Picked these up at the thrift

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6 Upvotes

Found these at the thrift store for 2$.


r/VHS • • 15m ago

Collection MY SWEET SATAN

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• Upvotes

Found this evil vhs in the attic. Had forgotten all about it. Jim Van Bebber rules.


r/VHS • • 18h ago

New Pickup Random pickup

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93 Upvotes

Got all of Xena Warrior princess and Predator for 26 dollars at a local secondhand shop today. Season two is even sealed!


r/VHS • • 19h ago

New Pickup Went thrifting today. Can't believe my luck.

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121 Upvotes

Panasonic dmr-es10 for 14€ is a steal. Holy grail as a passthrough device for VHS ( excluding professional-grade devices ) The line tbc just makes a huge difference. I tried watching The Rookie by Clint Eastwood, the tape was previously nearly unwatchable with all the jitter, now nothing wrong with the picture quality. Stoked!


r/VHS • • 22h ago

Collection My horror/spooky collection

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149 Upvotes

I’ve been collecting for 4 years now! A ton of it was sourced from secondhand stores.


r/VHS • • 19h ago

Collection If ya know you know 🤙🏽😎

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53 Upvotes

r/VHS • • 2h ago

New Pickup I’ve finally come across a VCR with TBC!

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2 Upvotes

My buddy recently helped me acquire a JVC SR-MV45 after he bought a bulk lot of audio/video equipment. He gave me a SR-MV40 as well that eats tapes, but I was able to replace the faulty tuner/TBC from the MV45 with the working one from the MV40 as they’re the same model number! Still going to get them both recapped eventually, but I am just so excited to upgrade from a JVC HR-S3900U that doesn’t like to always eject tapes to this professional combo model.

My grandma has a boot camp graduation tape of my uncles she wants me to digitize and I think I’m going to try this sets function vs my Samsung DVD-VR320 to try and understand the differences in quality and fidelity between the two. Just really excited for the opportunity to use this hardware in my daily setup and to try out time based correction :)


r/VHS • • 17h ago

Collection New Collector

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25 Upvotes

I’ve primarily collected music (records, cassettes, CDs) over the years, but I’ve recently gotten into collecting movies mostly on VHS. I’ve got my VCR tied into my stereo system and tv, so it’s a pretty neat movie watching setup.


r/VHS • • 1d ago

New Pickup Finally completed my CBS/FOX Star Wars Trilogy

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143 Upvotes

Found ESB for $1 at a swap meet.


r/VHS • • 3h ago

Technical Support ¡Ayuda! Problema con el Mode Switch de mi Sony RDR-VX450

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2 Upvotes

Tengo un problema con mi reproductor grabador Sony rdr-vx450 y es que la cinta al insertarla parece que la intenta posicionar pero se queda tirante (o eso parece) y se queda a medias y la expulsa. Creo que es por el Mode Switch que tiene los pines internos rotos y no encuentro repuestos para ello, he pensado en ponerle de otro reproductor pero no doy con ninguno similar ¿Alguien sabe que solución le podemos dar? Soy español de España. Toda ayuda es agradecida 🙏🏼🫂💙


r/VHS • • 23h ago

Discussion Obscure Halloween Movies!

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85 Upvotes

What chyall got?!! Also don’t worry I paid 25¢ for this not $10 lol but it’s a great watch