This tale beings about 2 or 3 years ago after I sold a once beloved copy of GHOSTBUSTERS & GHOSTBUSTERS II COLLECTOR'S EDITION on VHS that I had bought on eBay STILL IN THE SHRINK WRAP (!!!!) when the buyer contacted my sister (the official seller of the product as I did not have a bank account in my name, which was a necessity for selling products on Amazon - and still is, FYI) claiming the tapes were defective. There were many levels of grief over this, the main one being "what the hell kind of joke is this? HE OPENED THE PACKAGE????", completely destroying the value they had when I shipped them. He could have very well bought a used set of tapes and they would have served him just as well. But nooooooo...and then he selects "expedited" shipping and I end up choosing FedEx for some reason that I don't clearly remember, and they charge me somewhere at about 9/10 of what Amazon quoted was to be in my sister's bank account. I fail to come to terms with the reasoning I had behind NOT walking out of there and saying "YOU CHARGE TOO F*****ING MUCH FOR SHIPPING A SMALL PACKAGE!!!!!!!!". I mean, it wasn't tiny, but it wasn't like BIG or anywhere near either...
If it were not for my own similiar experience with a BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED copy of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 masterpiece A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (VHS), which I could tell was broken in some way or another before I even took the cellophane off (I heard something rattling around inside the box, but I didn't know if it would effect playback...).
To make a longer story shorter, I will simply give you a paraphrase of my advice - don't think NEW = MINT. Shrinkwrap does NOT equal a perfect item. Aside from the "unimportant" attributes, such as scars, stains, and other things that could arise from abuse and/or neglect, accumulating on the outer box of anything that HAS an outer box, the tape itself can wear down just from small holes in the shrinkwrap that let dust settle overabundantly over a series of years, 10, 20 or whatever. I don't think that's what caused the GB bust though; I think, for some reason that I can't quite pin down scientifically, that VHS tapes fare better used. Perhaps it's the old mentality of "use it or lose it" that predates viagra and the God of Film making (aka Satan?) wanted the world to know: USE IT - OR - LOSE - IT ! (!!!)!. Superstitious and rediculous I know, but that's the only guess I can come up with...
Will provide any updates on this theory as I obtain them, unless some paranoid schizo in the peanut gallery (you mean me?) wants to post a comment with some scientific explanation to end all scientific explanations...hehe
~Jo!
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