Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 15

I had so much success last month when I went to Goodwill the day before the 50% off sale, that I decided to forgo this months sale, and go the day before again.

Spoiler alert: I wasn't quite able to duplicate last months success, but I can assure you that it wasn't for lack of trying!

Last month, all of the video shelves were completely full, and so was the spinny rack of DVD's. By comparison, the video shelves were only half full this time, and the DVD rack was only about 40% full. It was a little disappointing to walk in and see that, but since it takes me 35 minutes to get there, I'm still gonna try and get my money's worth -- besides, just because the shelves are only half full, doesn't mean that there still can't be some good stuff in there.

Having not had cable/satellite for a number of years now, I'm a little out of touch with what all of the various stations have been up to, for example, is TNT still making westerns? I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's, they seemed to have a new original movie practically every week. Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but they did crank out more than a few. The only that I watched at the time, was Purgatory (has since been bought on DVD too).

I like westerns, so I don't know why I didn't watch more of these films? Maybe I can just use my standard "There were too many other things to watch at the time", it works in most cases when talking about shows/movies from that era because it's true. Anyways, never saw Crossfire Trail, at least not until last week when I brought these home. Good movie, standard fare as far as westerns go, if you've seen a few of them, you can kind of guess how this one's gonna play out. Everybody did a good job acting wise though, you can really tell that Mark Harmon enjoyed getting to play a bad guy.

I have the whole series on DVD, but Amazing Stories is one of a handful of shows that I'll still buy episodes on tape of, even if I already own them in another format... if only because they remind me of my childhood.

I didn't watch a lot of Disney when I was growing up, especially the live-action stuff, as such there's quite a lot of that I have never seen, or even heard of -- No Deposit No Return being one of those. I may not have ever heard of it before, but it didn't take much to sell me on it, seeing Darren McGavin in his Kolchak suit was all that was needed for me to pick this one up.

I don't recall where I was, but a couple of weeks after I moved here to TN, I found volume IV of this series, Greatest plays, and hadn't seen another one since. It's kind of neat to finally find another one, especially one that looks like it's going to be really good.

At this point I had looked through all of the videos, since I was holding four tapes, I figured I might as well go back through them and see if I could get to the 5/$2 threshold (they're fifty cents apiece otherwise) -- but before I could start doing so, a woman that works there came out from the back with a cart of videos (how fortuitous!). Since there was no one else looking at videos, I figured that there was no need to crowd her, so I moved over to the DVD's while she unloaded the basket.

As I already mentioned, the DVD rack was only about half full, and about half of those were leftover from last month, but I did find one thing of interest though. The Equalizer and John Wick came out within a month of each other, so it's almost impossible to read about either online, without seeing a comparison to the other. You'll find plenty of "debates" over which is better, although more often than not, these "debates" just end up devolving into name calling... this is how our modern world works after all! Personally, I like John Wick more, but I'm a fan of the more traditional revenge pictures, so that's probably why I lean the way that I do. The Equalizer is still a solid film though, my only real complaint is that I wish it would've been a little bit more like the television show, but I'm guessing that's just a me thing.

After taking what felt like forever, the gal finally gone done putting out the rest of the videos, and now there was three more shelves worth of stuff to look at, as well as some competition in the form of two guys (one of whom was a hipster wearing a kitschy video store shirt) that showed up seemingly out of thin air once she got done. Thankfully though, I'm a seasoned vet when it comes to scanning VHS titles, so before they could even finish the first of the newly stocked shelves, I was already grabbing the only thing worth taking off of the third shelf (eat it, hipster!).

Look at that beauty! You don't see a lot of tapes like this in the wild anymore, as most of them, as well as pretty much all of the big box horror, are in private collections (or sitting in eBay stores). I have more than a few obscure horror videos, but 99% of those were acquired decades ago, back when almost nobody cared about such things. Most of the 80's slasher pics were not very good, they're made up of mostly just boobs and blood, but almost always had great video covers, which is where most of the value lies -- (most) people don't collect them for the film itself, they do it for the covers, as they remind them of being a kid/teen and wandering down the horror aisle(s) of their local video stores. In a way, it really is nostalgia in it's purest form. I sure am glad that I waited for that woman to put those tapes out (I almost didn't), because finding this one really made my day. And I almost forgot, the best part about this particular tape? It's not an ex-rental, which is pretty darn rare for something like this.

I may not have found as many videos as last month, but overall I don't think that I did too bad, I mean it was certainly worth the trip, and in the end that's all I really care about... getting enough to justify me going out. I also made a somewhat rare (at least for me) stop at Big Lots that morning as well, a stop that yielded some surprising goodies, which will be covered in Wednesday's post. And yes, I know, two video/DVD posts in a row, deal with it!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 7

Last weekend was the 50% off of everything sale at Goodwill that's now held on the first Saturday of each month, and since I'm mentioning it (in a post no less), one can safely assume that said sale is the source of today's show & tell.

I was feeling somewhat spry on this particular Saturday, so much so, that I was even able to leave on time for once (I'm almost always 15-20 minutes behind schedule). They open at 8am, and it was looking like I would be getting there with about ten minutes to spare, which I did. I expected to see a long line of "bargain" hunters eagerly waiting for the store to open, instead I was greeted by the sight of people already leaving the store, many of whom were pushing carts that had been filled with the spoils of war.

The store had obviously opened up considerably earlier than normal, so while I was still technically an early bird, I just wasn't one of the earliest birds! Now the only question was, would there be any worms left?

Believe it or not, I haven't seen this since it originally aired back in '94... it seemed like it might be time for another viewing.

This series is in the public domain, and has been for a long time. I also already have the entire series on DVD, but for a quarter I couldn't resist this still sealed tape... me thinks that the previous owner's may have taken the "Collector's Edition" a little too seriously.

I think I might be one of the few people left who hasn't seen this movie, sometime after Thanksgiving I'll change that.

Here's another series that I have all of on DVD, but I've never found one of the Amazing Stories VHS volumes before, and again it was only a quarter, so...

It's not what one would call a "good" movie by any stretch of the imagination, but Hackers is one of my favorite movies of all time, probably in my top 25. I already have it on DVD and VHS, but I didn't have this second video release. Without even looking at the date on the back, I could tell this was a later release because Angeline Jolie is given top billing on the cover. Jonny Lee Miller was the star of the movie, but she was the bigger name when this tape was released in 2000, so in an attempt to capitalize on that (and to sell more copies of course), her name and face were prominently featured on the front. Personally, I never considered her to be a star, and in my mind she was never a bigger name than Jonny Lee Miller.

Another cheap back-up copy.

I haven't seen this one before, and it's not the type of film that I go for, but it does have an awesome cast, so I might as well give it a go.

I hadn't heard of this one before, but I'll watch anything with Gene Barry in it, so it was kind of a no brainer. Sounds like it's going to be Hitchcockian in nature, which is just fine by me.

The cashiers always ask if you want to round up your total to support their job training program, you'd have to be a real heel not to, so after rounding up, my eight tapes set me back a whole $3.00... works for me!

As an aside, on my way back to the media section, I walked through the toy aisle. While doing so, I noticed about half a dozen baseball SLU's from the mid 90's. They were still in package, and with the discount they would have been $1.50 each. This was now the second time in a matter of weeks that I have been tempted by those poorly sculpted pieces of the past, and once again I was able to resist their pull. I did sort of want the cards, but $1.50 seemed like a lot to pay just for a SLU card of Mike Mussina, JT Snow, or Mike Greenwell (among others). After I was done shopping, I walked back down the toy aisle on my way to the checkout, as I did, I passed a guy that looked like he might be a few years older than me who was gathering up all of those SLU's -- I wasn't surprised to see someone else buying them, as that was a good price -- but the thing that caught my eye, was the look of sheer happiness that was pasted across his face, it was like seeing nostalgia in it's purest form. Even if I hadn't bought anything, being able to witness that moment would have been worth the entire trip alone.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.