wendyprice•10d agoOG Member

Don't spend $40 on that "restored" VHS copy of The Room like I did

I found a seller on eBay who claimed they had a professionally restored VHS of The Room. Paid $40 for it. When it arrived, it was just a store-bought blank tape with the movie recorded off some cable channel in 2004. The tracking was off and the audio kept cutting out. Total waste. Anyone else gotten burned buying old physical media online?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jennifer8d ago

Remember reading somewhere that eBay has a buyer protection rule against misrepresented items.

olivia39810d ago

Man, that's rough. Something similar happened to me a few years back but with a VHS of "The Godfather Part III" that was supposedly a rare promo copy. Paid $30 and got a tape that looked like someone recorded it off HBO in 1991 - the tracking was so bad the whole movie looked like it was underwater. Your mileage may vary, but I've learned the hard way that "professionally restored" on eBay usually means someone wiped their old home recordings and stuck a label on it. At least you didn't pay $40 for a tape that was just static like I did once with a "rare" Star Wars trailer compilation. Take this with a grain of salt, but I stick to sellers with actual photos of the tape itself now - not just a picture of the box art.

emery_black10d ago

Honestly I feel this so hard. I bought a "sealed" copy of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" on VHS once from a seller who said it was a 1987 release. Three days later I got a tape that had a handwritten label that said "Clint Eastwood movie" and it was actually "Joe Kidd" recorded off cable. Broke my heart. Now I always ask for a photo of the actual tape with a piece of paper with today's date on it. If they can't do that I just walk away.