So, browsing one of the local flea-market/yard-sale type groups on Facebook, I discovered this post…
Gladiator on VHS for sale. Only $3.00 American!
As you can imagine because I’m blogging about it, many questions came to mind. It’s hard to even know where to begin.
We’ll start with the obvious. Who would pay $3 for a VHS cassette of any movie, let alone this movie? I mean Gladiator was a good film… but here is a shortlist of better values available online…
- $1.99 on DVD from Barnes & Noble
- $3.49 for a two-disc collector’s edition on DVD from Amazon
- 99¢ on VHS from she super-shady Jakemart website
- $6.39 on Blu-ray from Barnes & Noble
This is just for physical media. I didn’t even look into streaming. I get that not everyone is set up to stream and that some people (myself included) like to put their hands on physical tangible media.
Who has a working VCR? OK. I do, but I’m odd. It’s a VCR/DVD-recorder, and someday I will transfer all of my VHS tapes to DVD (which is already a dead format). Who is still watching video tapes? I mean, watching the old 4:3 aspect ratio drives me nuts these days.
The other side of this… who goes through their stuff, decides they can part with this, and assigns a $3 value to it? I mean, I could see if this was a collector’s item. I have Star Wars on VHS and I’ll probably have it forever, but The Gladiator? Sure, it was a good movie… but not that good. Why were they even still making video tapes in the year 2000?
What do you need that badly that costs $3? This wouldn’t be worth the gas money or the bus fair to meet someone to make the sale.
I have been strapped for cash, but never would think to list what essentially amounts to garbage for a negligible value on a Facebook flea market group. If this sells, I really have a lot of stuff that I need to be listing for under $5 amounts.
