Thrift Store Digest 2

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It is time once again for my digest of used movies and music on tapes and discs that you can either buy really cheap or fork out enough dough to obtain ‘collectors item’ status. Read on for more details about my latest treasure hunt that might convince you to nurture physical media when streaming wants your mindshare.

This time, I have thrown in some VHS movies acquired from EBay that likely wouldn’t be possible to find at charity thrift stores including Goodwill. These usually fetch for higher amounts than a thrift store that relies on donations could sell them fast enough at the very low end of the price range.

**Disney animated movies on tape aren’t really that hard to find, but they do sell out very quickly.**

More people continue to toss away their precious movie and music discs in favor of streaming. What do they have to lose? Well, on my recent thrift store visit, I found three of Disney’s all-time animation greats on VHS, and it’s all for the sake of collecting them for historical purposes. Each re-release of the same movie every x number of years provides a certain degree of collectible details such as front cover art. I don’t think I will ever intend to play them full-length in the VCR but with the possible exception of ‘bonus material’ like ads provided by Disney themselves.

**If you see the 20th Century-Fox logo on the insert, better pick it up right away because these may not be released again on physical media for the foreseeable future.**

On top of these, I also found not one, but four Fox Searchlight indies on standard DVDs — and in very good to excellent condition, btw — that could have difficulty getting brand new 4K / HD disc releases down the road. That’s because Disney is the owner of 20th Century-Fox content and its investment with Disney Plus puts physical media collectors on a years-long waitlist.

**Animation from the 2000s still looks cool. Thrift stores love to sell things like this.**

Animation on DVD can be a little bit tough to hunt down, but luckily I discovered the first two volumes of the 2000s series ATOMIC BETTY on DVD, with eight episodes apiece — that’s 16 out of 79 produced. Yet, volume one is a factory sealed copy! Could I sell this one and make a profit? I probably wouldn’t dare try it, because the risk of disc rot is too great for an item that’s existed for over 20 years. (** On an unrelated note, I create cartoons — head on over to this link and this link. **)

**Musicals on videotape are abundant. Buy them for the nostalgia factor.**

If you’re gonna collect VHS tapes, then go with the vintage musicals. At the same thrift store where I found GUYS AND DOLLS and AUNTIE MAME, here we have FINIAN’S RAINBOW and KISS ME KATE. Sure, the picture quality will suffer on a 4K TV, but the fullscreen aspect ratios should provide a better perspective of the movies themselves. In fact you might get to see more showgirl legs and bottoms if applicable, the most vital elements that would otherwise be cut off on widescreen.

**Old VHS rental tapes like this one are actually worth holding on to because Blockbuster labels are historical preservation.**

What makes this old battered down and scuffed up VHS copy of CHARIOTS OF FIRE truly special is this: there’s Blockbuster sticker snuff plastered on the tape, a nostalgic way of saying that video rental stores were doing business with customers by giving them notice to rewind and return tapes as scheduled. Stickers were also abusive to the bodily integrity to videotapes as well, but as long as they were store property it had the right to do so. Secondly, this copy is dated 1986 on the back of the box, and it appears to be a newly modified edition of the very first home video release from 1982 with encoded Dolby Stereo and a tagline on the box front. A successor 1991 copy of this film retains the same cover, but replaces the tagline with an ‘Oscar’ blurb. I notice that the labels feature the very same typeface of Warner’s first video release with exception of the WB ‘cheesy shield’ appearance. It also featured the original ‘Big W’ ident that precedes the FBI warning screen, as with many other first-gen titles that got 1986-87 reissues shipped in box sleeves.

**This cover art would have looked good on any shelf, including at the video rental store. Damn those stickers, though!**

Speaking of Warner, clamshell packaging of its movie titles was used right until about the summer of 1986 while in permanent transition to box sleeves. One such example is this rental copy of the Bob Fosse-directed STAR 80, which was a fictionalized account of the late model Dorothy Stratten. I will have much more to write about Warner clamshells in a future post because this was an attractive style of packaging that could have easily filled up a 1980s bookshelf sitting right beside Time-Life’s home improvement series.

**There’s a whole lotta Barbra Streisand, a pile’s worth o’ Jim Nabors and plenty of ol’ time religion to choose from. And then… there’s the lovely Basia.**

Let’s be serious here… there’s something about Basia when I go out thrifting because they sure are selling a whole bunch of used CD copies of her music — read: ‘while supplies last’. I doubt anyone born after 1985 would have remembered or even listened to the beautiful and eclectic Basia, the Polish native pop singer with a charming appetite for jazz, soul and bossa nova that sounded stylish by late 80s standards. Her greatest success was mainly on the adult contemporary chart with radio-ready cuts like ‘Time And Tide’ and ‘Cruising For Bruising’, although they all came up well short on the mainstream top ten in the U.S.

Believe it or not, Basia came out with a 1990 music video companion tape titled ‘A New Day’ that offers complimentary footage woven through seven videos from singles of her first two albums. It’s one of many video comps in the VHS era long before YouTube existed, and a cute video document at that where you really got to know her well. But I have to ask… was Sade or even Swing Out Sister her biggest competition and were younger listeners hooked on power players like Richard Marx and Taylor Dayne paying attention? Surely enough, with two platinum selling albums in the U.S., you can say that Basia independently went out of her way to achieve great success. I’m all up for ‘unique’, and somehow I think Basia’s feminine display of vocal eclecticism is purely badass enough to be treasured and valued once again because she’s just simply getting more and more overlooked with time.

**We lost Hayden Panettiere in August 2026, another young celebrity who started so young.**

Finally, let us take a moment to salute the young performers in our daily entertainment. The recent and tragic passing of Hayden Panettiere, an actress who starred in a pair of hit TV series, HEROES and NASHVILLE — and a voice performer in the acclaimed Disney-esque KINGDOM HEARTS video game series — brought sky-high emotions and a national conversation about teenage stars who paid a terrible price just for being famous. Many of them have left us with or without explanation, while many others have overcome the odds and are still chugging right along. Imagine how long it took for a ‘triple-threat’ like Selena Gomez to transition from Disney Channel star to an overnight billionaire. Or even Brie Larson, who transitioned from teenage cheesefests like SLEEPOVER to Oscar-winning gold in a compelling indie called ROOM and becoming ‘Captain Marvel’.

Here are just a few more thrift store items you could find with notable young actors…