The Vine: July 5, 2007
Sars,
I’ve got a question that also has to do with apartments and stuff, although this is more in the “getting rid of” vein. You see, I have boxes and boxes of old media — by that, I mean, audio and video tapes — that it’s time to be rid of. I don’t really want all of these tapes buried in a landfill, but seeing as they are somewhat out of style, I don’t know what else I could do with them. Do you or your readers have any suggestions?
Thanks a lot,
Did I Mention That The Video Tapes Might Be Entirely Full Of Star Trek Episodes?
Dear One Man’s Trek Is Another Man’s Treasure,
I don’t know whether you want to try to make a couple bucks off the tapes; if so, you could list them on eBay or Craigslist.If you just want them out of the house, but would rather they go to a good home than to a garbage barge, you could Craigslist them then, too; just note in the subject line of the listing that the box is free.
You can also see if there’s a Freecycle in your area, or check out the new Craigslistish site from eBay, Kijiji.
Or maybe a TN reader can take them off your hands for the cost of shipping; if anyone’s interested, hit the comments and we’ll set it up.
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult rando
Does your local library take donations? Perhaps a local social work group? Not knowing where you are, I’m sure there are any number of organizations/charities who might be happy take miscellaneous tapes off your hands.
If the tapes are commercial (as opposed to blank tapes you recorded yourself), your local public library would probably take them. I work at one, and we take audio tapes for our used book sale, and video tapes both for sale and for our collection. We want to provide material for everyone, so we still make VCR tapes available for those without a DVD player.
Here’s another vote for Freecycle.
I’m not offering to take the tapes, but I am offering thanks for the advice, speaking as another person who has already thrown away most of her vhs tapes that may have been entirely full of Trek. :-)
YMMV, but where I am, I just need to leave things like this in my back alley, and someone will invariably pick it up. I had a pile of old VHS tapes too that I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting. I put them out in the morning, and they were gone by the time I came home that evening. No muss. No fuss.
Offbeat as this sounds – perhaps an art school? Rubbish artists, found object artists, etc, use stuff like this in art pieces. Unwound video and audio tape is an awesome medium.
Donations to a library is a great idea for the commerical stuff. Listing it on Craigslist is a good idea for the non-commercial tapes. An artist looking for this stuff would take the box off your hands without caring about the content of the tapes.
If there’s a college nearby, some dorms will maintain a small video/DVD library that’s made up of mostly donations, mine did. Or try calling a women’s shelter to see if they’d like the tapes as a donation, they’d probably even be willing to take home made tapes as long as they were labled and pre-screened.
Most hospitals would also be pretty happy to take these.
(If it hadn’t been for donated tapes, I’d’ve lost my mind completely after a few days in the hospital!)
If no one will take them off your hands, you can recycle old media through Greendisk. http://www.greendisk.com
My husband and I often pick up $2 VHS at local thrift stores. We’ve purchased Fletch Lives, My Cousin Vinnie, The Pope Must Die(t) (worth it!), Latter Days, Alive, The Elephant Man, etc. We are thrilled with our thrift and new collection of both crap and worthy films. Anyway…Salvation Army, Goodwill, independent thrift and second-hand stores get my vote.
How about this?
http://www.craftbits.com/viewProject.do?projectID=1816
turn old VHS tapes in cool, crocheted purses!
I read this and thought, “Oh my god, did my husband write this on my behalf?”
Then I showed it to him and he looked at me and said, “You didn’t write that, did you?”
We both were half-kidding, but ONLY because we got rid of all the ST:TNG Premier Collector’s Edition complete series VHS three years ago.
I have a huge box of commercial VHS and I’ve been thinking of the public library as well. Glad to know that’s a viable consideration.
I work at a Senior Center, and most older seniors still have VCRs. We have an “honor system” lending library that’s pretty well traffiked. So, you could check Senior Centers and convalesecent homes in your area.
This is only for commercial tapes – they probably won’t take your compilation/episode tapes.
Just wanted to second the vote for a hospital donation. So long as the tapes are reasonably clean (as in, the cat hasn’t marked them as his territory or anything), they’ll probably take the pre-recorded ones, possibly the home grown ones as well. I work as a Child Life Specialist in Ohio, and we have a stash of movies on each unit, so it doesn’t even matter if it’s something you think everybody has already — we always need multiples. Another option would be a Ronald McDonald house — if you have a children’s hospital in your area, you probably have a RMH, too.
Seconding the vote for donating the tapes to the local women’s shelter.
I’m in the University of Wisconsin’s Media & Cultural Studies graduate program, and we keep an extensive library of old television shows and movies in our media center for research and teaching purposes. If you live in a large-ish city, you might check out the local university and see if they have any programs that would appreciate the donation. I can honestly think of three guys who would love to get their hands on old Star Trek eps for their research!
Second the suggestion for RMH; a woman I worked with stayed at one while her son was recovering from a horrific car accident and she said the moves were a godsend.
Giving to someone in your community as a great idea, however, Freecycle as a concept is fab, unforunately, the inner foundations are becoming rocky with the grassroots level f the community caring aspect being whittled away in favour of large corporation sponsorship. There are many groups that have splintered away recently because the owner/moderators are severely disturbed by this. Other groups to consider apart from Freecycle is an international directory of http://www.freesharing.org or if you are based in the UK, there is a rapid growing network called Realcycle that works in the same way as Freecycle but with a very community caring aspect, this you can find at http://www.realcycle.co.uk
Goodwill will also take used commercial VHS cassettes. That’s where our whole collection went when we decided we’d rather have the shelf space!