Extreme Ghostbusters Original First-Run TV Broadcast Recordings VHS Tapes

[spookcentral]

I recently found my set of 8 VHS tapes containing my original first-run TV recordings of all 40 Extreme Ghostbusters episodes, taped from WWOR-TV in late 1997 when the series originally aired. These are near-perfect recordings with no commercials and no edits. In fact, one episode has a “clapboard goof” that was later corrected. There is very little use of station logo/bugs on-screen, and the end credits are all shown full-screen (nothing shrunk down) and some don’t even have an announcer speaking over the music. WWOR really left the show fairly untouched, which made it great for me to preserve. I recorded these in the highest quality SP speed and put five episode on each T-120 tape. I even included a printed episode list for each tape (with time codes as to when each episode starts), tucked inside each case. Yeah, I went “all out” in making these as perfect as possible, though I used to do that for all of my tapes back in the 1990s and 2000s.

I have just tested the first tape and snapped a few pics off the TV from the opening of the first episode on the first tape. Even though these tapes are 30 years old, because I keep my media in excellent condition, the tapes still play perfectly; at least the first one.

Since I now have THREE different copies of these episodes on disc - one bootleg SD Blu-ray, one bootleg HD Blu-ray, one official SD DVD - I really have no need to keep these tapes anymore. I don’t believe that the episodes on any of the discs are edited, and aside from a “clapboard goof” in one or two episodes, there aren’t any “alternate episodes” to speak of.

I don’t want to throw out the tapes, and I would love for them to go to someone who would appreciate them, but would anyone even be interested in VHS tapes in 2026? What would be a reasonable amount to sell them for? Please share your thoughts. Thanks.

[ecto90]

There’s definitely a market for this and I’d make an offer if I wasn’t starting to assemble parts for a gb84 pack. I’d say perhaps 10 each? Though I have no idea what a complete series should go for of such rarity

[mrmichaelt]

Cool find, Paul. I agree, $10 sounds fair to me. Maybe $15-20 since you took such care with the recordings.

[spookcentral]

I appreciate the feedback. $10 per tape seems fair, so I just added them to the Spook Central Shop as an $80 set:

https://shop.spook-central.com/video/347-extreme-ghostbusters-the-complete-series-original-first-run-tv-broadcast-recordings-8-vhs-tapes.html

I may write a post about it on Spook Central to help bring awareness to the tape set being up for sale, and to document that I own (or will have once owned) these tapes and the effort I put into getting them as perfect as possible.

Maybe I’ll get out the analog & digital video transfer device I bought last year and give it its first analog test by doing a quick recording of the first episode to show that (1) the tapes really DO still play, and (2) the care I took into removing commercials and making them as perfect as possible at the time. It might be interesting to fellow video archaeologists

I’m also happy to report that ALL of my “special tapes” survived. My “home movies” (separate from family home movies), various professionally-recorded school events (such as my graduation), all of my “Ghostbusters Stuff” tapes, the RGB Alt Episodes tape (what I was able to copy off of the ruined tapes back in 2013), the 1989 ABC broadcast of GB1, plus tapes full of commercials, movie trailers, and music videos. All compilations were carefully-assembled and with everything noted on printed inserts with timecodes. There’s also a “Ghostbusters 3” fan-made VHS that is the video game cutscenes and footage. One day I want to transfer all of these special tapes, and all of the other tapes, to digital and then DVD. Between home-recorded tapes and commercially-sold tapes, I have about 350 tapes, so that’s a REALLY big project. I also need to find my “video stabilizer” to remove copy-protection from the commercially-sold tapes. Thankfully, lots of stuff is either on Youtube or was officially released, so as long as it’s not edited, that helps a lot.

You know, it never fails that every time I think something is just going to be a quick “thing”, it turns into a big project. The other day, I thought it would only take me an hour or two to go through the boxes of VHS tapes I have in storage so that I could finally get an idea as to what survived the hurricane back in 2012. It took me the WHOLE DAY to photograph each and every tape label, and I ended up with a gallery of about 325 photos! I had no idea that I still had that many tapes, yet none of them were the movies I taped off of HBO and other channels, which was what I originally was looking for. (If I want to take it one step further, and make a searchable list, I will need to transcribe/OCR all text from the photos - but that’s a project for a future date.)

[spookcentral]

I just wrote the Spook Central article about the tapes and even did a quickie (and rather bad) video transfer of the first episode for reference. It can be found at Extreme Ghostbusters Original First-Run TV Broadcast Recordings VHS Tapes

Thanks, again, for all of your opinions.

[guyx]

With VHS I wonder if having the commercials might make it more valuable. People love to relive that whole era. And nostalgic commercials are a big part of that. Some channels like Fox Kids had cool interstitial