I always flip through when my thrift store has a stack of Nat Geos but today was the first time it delivered! For those curious it’s not really monetarily valuable, you can get one for like $10 on eBay, but I just think it’s a neat cultural artifact to have!
Someone’s whole book collection got donated yesterday, I found dozens and dozens of Mylar wrapped books, all 80s and 90s fiction; Tom Wolfe, James Lee Burke, Chrichton, all of that genre. This was definitely the gem of the lot!
Traded some other material with a fellow Redditor for this lot that included a SpongeBob tape I didn’t have. I had just recently acquired a Harriet the Spy tape solely for the intention of gutting the casing (sorry for Harriet fans, I just want the orange casing) and when I was traded this spongebill tape I had to take advantage. I’m very very torn right now in that I have a sealed (factory sealed) The Sponge Who Could Fly tape that I also really really want to transfer to Orange Snick tape but also don’t want to kill sealed value of.
You used me… for TAPE DEVELOPMENT
The Bachman Books is going to a friend of mine but I found it this week and I actually prefer this cover to the Plume or NAL one.
The Nightmare on Elm St Black Flame pub is a gift from a. Friend and fellow Redditor, my first Nightmare novel!
The rest were all found at thrift stores this week. Total Recall is my favorite of the finds as it’s the origin of one of the full page artworks in Paperbacks From Hell!
I sent the photo to a friend who’s been collecting Dune stuff. I walked away and looked at other books and then came back to the display for a final sweep before leaving and then saw the Bachman Books. I went back to the photo I took and sure enough there it was hiding in plain sight. I’ve found the Plume cover but not the Signet copy before so I didn’t spot it right away.
This copy is going to a different friend/coworker as a goodbye gift for their final shift. They’ve been trying to collect every King book, was happy to find a copy for them!
Side note but this was one of the craziest thrift runs I’ve ever had. A few hours after this I found a signed copy of Anthony Bourdain’s “The Nasty Bits”, one of my holy grail books, a signed Kathe Koja, and some other 70s-80s pulp horror fiction.
I have checked EVERY Bourdain book I’ve ever found at every thrift store hoping to see that sharpie. Today it finally happened.
I’ve been looking for a signed Bourdain book for so long!
Had a Redditor post that they were looking for a Halloweentown tape. There is an official one with both the first and second movies but it’s very very scarce. I happened to have a boot copy that a coworker gave me that I could let go. But! It was on an unlabeled tape in a generic side loader sleeve. I thought I could do better and I’ve been wanting to try this, so I took a stab at making a custom sleeve for it!
Made the sleeve and then did a case swap with an old copy of The Rugrats Movie as I thought the orange color was just so befitting this movie (but blasphemy to put a Disney movie in a Nickelodeon case). This is the end result! There’s things I could do better on a second attempt but hopefully this Redditor likes it better than the blank case they’d have otherwise gotten!
I’m excited to make a few custom things for myself, but next step is learning how to actually record new media onto a blank.
Reading IJ for the first time, this juxtaposition made me laugh. One of my favorite little bits so far.
Thrilled with the 311. I’m always looking for pop punk and adjacent tapes. Still searching for the Blink Urethra Chronicles tape, as well as any skate compilations. Scream 3 was a missing piece, now I just need 2 and the Barrymore blue alt cover of 1 to complete that set. I used to be a league bowler but never thought about collecting bowling tapes until I found this one. New collection started!
I’m not associated with this guy but figured I’d do my part to help him get his grail book by posting here.
Just finished my trek to the tower this week and wanted to finish making my DT as SpongeBob memes. I know I’m missing Talisman and Black House, I’m reading those back to back later this year in anticipation of Other Worlds. The last 3 books had so much going on that you could do a dozen different memes for each one. Hope this gives you a chuckle. Long days and pleasant nights memeslingers.
My wife was thrilled with Alanis as well!
For my birthday this year my wife got me the VHS is Life cleaner and I’d used it to clean a few spored tapes I had in a closet. There’s a fellow collector/redditor on this page that lives a few blocks from me and we always share finds or trade tapes when we can. They mentioned they had a tape they hadn’t yet been able to watch due to its condition so I offered to give it a shot. This the result!
Constructive criticism is welcome but do remember this is in fact my first rodeo and I have a lot to learn still. Right away I can say the label needed to be about 1-1/2cm to the right but it was originally cocked on its original casing so at least I managed to level it 😅. The label did decent in its transfer to its new casing but after a few rounds with a heat gun + xacto knife you just risk charring the paper at a certain point. It’s tissue paper from 1984 so it did decent on its transfer, but I do wish I could have kept the label in better shape.
They said they were okay with losing the “please rewind” sticker and since I had to unstick the ends to disassemble the casing already it was better to let that go. I had to do a case swap since the original tape had a security pin stuck directly through the center of the casing and the drive was completely mangled. I could have maybe saved it with the correct drill bit and a rubber band but it ended up being easier just to remove the spools and put them in a new case. I tried searching this sub for tips on removing that pin carefully but best I could find was a video of a guy prying the casing in half with two flat heads so my method was slightly less destructive.
But at the end of the day, it remained mostly of a piece and it plays perfectly! I’d never seen this movie before but I screened the first 20 mins or so for QC and it seems like absolute trash, I can’t wait to watch it in full!
Picked this book up for about $1.50 at the thrift store, it was just calling out to me. Inside I found a note from a now closed Boston rare bookseller trying to sell a set of Henry James novels to who I presume was this books owner. Also fitting it’s a Boston bookstore selling a copy of The Bostonians (to someone in California, the book was found in Denver, it’s been around!). Also two old newspapers about the James family. Also found in my research, the founder of the rare bookstore was on the Lusitania and wrote a memoir on the topic that’s well known.
The book was calling out to me at the thrift store and it was half price so only paid about $1.50 for it. Not a rare book in any form but I thought the letter inside would be interesting to some here.
Giving it to a fellow Redditor who collects VHS and sci-fi but I’ll definitely give it a watch beforehand!
First time finding blues on 78! Excited to spin these tonight!