These VHS Tapes Sold for Shocking Amounts of Money

It wasn’t that long ago that a VHS tape was barely worth the magnetic tape it was printed on. With the advent of DVD and Blu-ray, old cassettes were seen as archaic; grainy, muddy, and far less user-friendly than discs. Then physical media in general began to decline thanks to the rise of the streaming ecosystem, erasing whatever demand still remained for the old tapes. Stores couldn’t even give their stock away. VHS tapes were thrown away by the thousands. Maybe by the millions.

But nostalgia is a funny thing. Just like baseball cards and comic books and vintage toys before them, people have begun to collect VHS tapes — and to get them professionally graded by companies who authenticate their quality and encase them in plastic to preserve them for all eternity. (You didn’t actually want to use that VHS copy of Mannequin Two: On the Move, right?)

And because so many people tossed their collections (or actually opened them and used them in their VCRs like normal human beings), unopened specimens now routinely sell for three or even four figures if they are in good enough condition — especially for tapes of childhood favorites from the 1980s and ’90s.

Using eBay and the information about sold listings on the site’s seller research tools, I compiled 20 graded VHS tapes that recently sold for big bucks on eBay. How big? The lowest sale price I included was $500. Some of these numbers are wild enough to make you want to dig through your attic and see if your mom hung on to your old copy of Pokemon: The First Movie. 

READ MORE: DVDs That Are Still Worth a Shocking Amount of Money