What is VHS?
VHS (Video Home System) is a magnetic-tape video format developed by JVC and released in 1976. A film is stored as an analogue signal on half-inch tape wound between two spools inside a plastic cassette, which you push into a video cassette recorder. It won the format war against Betamax in the 1980s, ruled home video for two decades, and was quietly declared dead when the last VCR manufacturer stopped production in 2016. If you put one in upside down, it will eat itself.
What is a Velociraptor?
Velociraptor was a small, feathered, turkey-sized carnivorous dinosaur that lived around 75 million years ago in what is now Mongolia. It was roughly the size of a large chicken, not the man-height scaly killing machine a certain 1993 film sold you (that was closer to a Deinonychus, but 'Deinonychus' does not fit on a lunchbox). It could not open doors. Probably.
What is VHS Velociraptor?
This website.
Why now? Why not 20 years ago?
Great question. Mostly because 20 years ago is somehow still the 2000s, by which point VHS was already a dead format gathering dust next to the DVD player. There was never a good time to launch a VHS price-comparison website. We picked the worst one, on purpose.
This site looks weird and is hard to navigate?
That is not even a question. But yes - that's the idea, thank you.
But really, why does it look like this?
It was the style at the time. Best viewed in Netscape Navigator at 800x600, on a computer that makes a noise like a fax machine having a disagreement.
Are these prices accurate?
No. Every price on this site is a number we invented. The eBay link, however, runs a real search, so you can go and find an actual price with your own two eyes, like a pioneer.
Do any of these video stores still exist?
The big national chains? No - all bankrupt, liquidated, or now a Starbucks. But against all odds, ONE Blockbuster is still open, in Bend, Oregon (yes, genuinely - bendblockbuster.com), and a stubborn handful of independent video shops are still hanging on around the world. If you ever pass one, go in and rent something. Everyone else ends up on eBay, which is not even a shop.
Can I actually buy these tapes?
Yes. Click the 'try here?' link on any film and it runs a live eBay search for that title on VHS. Whether you SHOULD buy a VHS tape in this day and age is a separate conversation to have with yourself, quietly, in the dark.
Where else can I find VHS?
Everywhere and nowhere. Try op shops and thrift stores (the natural habitat of the three-dollar tape), your grandmother's house, that mouldy plastic tub in the garage you have been meaning to sort out since 2004, hard-rubbish night, garage sales, estate sales, and the back shelf of almost any charity shop. Half the fun is the hunt. The other half is the smell.
Do I need a VCR?
Yes. A VHS tape without a VCR is a small plastic brick with a ribbon inside. You will also need a television with the right kind of input, a functioning memory of the 1990s, and about forty minutes to rewind anything.
What does 'Be Kind, Rewind' mean?
Video shops charged a small fee if you returned a tape without rewinding it to the start, because otherwise the next renter had to do it. 'Be Kind, Rewind' was the polite sticker reminding you not to be that person. A simpler, more courteous time.
Is my old tape worth anything?
Almost certainly not. The vast majority of VHS tapes are worth about a dollar, if that. A rare few - early horror releases, out-of-print oddities, first-run Disney cassettes - can fetch real money, which is precisely the myth that keeps this whole website in business. Check the eBay link and manage your expectations.
What is a 'Black Diamond' Disney tape?
An enduring internet myth holds that Disney VHS tapes with a small black diamond on the spine are worth thousands. In reality they were pressed by the tens of millions and are worth roughly what you would expect, which is not much. But 'my tape might be worth ten grand' is a far better story than the truth, so it never quite dies.
What are Frequently Asked Questions?
Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs, are a list of questions supposedly asked so often that a website answers them pre-emptively to save everyone the trouble. In practice almost none of them are asked frequently, or at all - they are simply questions the website fancied answering. This one, for example. Nobody has ever asked us this. And yet here we both are.
Who runs this site?
A velociraptor in sunglasses holding a VHS tape. You have seen him at the top of every page. He does not answer emails.
What is your email address?
From our recollection, email had not quite been invented in 1998. Then again, maybe it had - it is all a bit fuzzy back there. Either way, we do not have one, the velociraptor has no thumbs, and he would only ignore it anyway.
Why build a VHS price comparison site if you cannot actually compare any stores?
Our intentions were pure. We set out to build the finest VHS price comparison engine on the internet, cross-referencing every video shop in the land. Then, partway through construction, we discovered that every single VHS retailer had gone out of business. Rather than stop, we pressed on, undeterred and arguably unwise. The comparison now has exactly one competitor left standing, and it is eBay.
Can I register for automated price alerts?
Not at this stage, and, realistically, never. As a workaround we suggest bookmarking your favourite tape pages on your phone, setting an alarm to go off every five minutes for the rest of your natural life, and each time it does, quickly loading the page and hitting refresh. You will be the first to know about nothing in particular.
Is this affiliated with eBay, any film studio, or anyone at all?
No. This is an independent bit of fun. We are an eBay Partner, which means if you buy something through one of our links we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. That is the entire business model. Cool your jets, legal.
The tape got stuck in my VCR. What do I do?
Turn it off. Do not force it. Locate a pencil or a flat screwdriver, summon the confidence of someone who has definitely done this before, and gently ease the cassette out. If a long ribbon of tape comes out with it, that film is now a decoration.
Do you sell the tapes yourselves?
No. We are a signpost, not a shop. We point at eBay and wish you luck. Think of us as a very colourful roadside attraction that happens to be about VHS.
Why a velociraptor?
Why not a velociraptor. We did briefly consider VHS Volcano, but for some reason that made even less sense, so the raptor got the job.
Is VHS better than Laserdisc?
No. Laserdisc was better than VHS in almost every way, which is precisely why hardly anyone bought one. Those glorious dinner-plate-sized discs, which you had to flip over halfway through the film like a giant vinyl record, were a cinephile's dream and a coffee table's nightmare. We respect Laserdisc enormously and stock exactly none of it.
Is VHS better than DVD?
No. VHS is objectively worse in picture, sound, durability and convenience. This is not up for debate. We love it anyway, which is more or less the entire human condition in a plastic shell.
Is VHS better than Blu-ray?
Oh, come on.
What happened to Betamax?
Betamax was a rival tape format, arguably better than VHS, that lost the format war regardless, because being better has never once been enough. It limped on until 2016. Pour one out.
My VCR is flashing 12:00. How do I fix it?
You do not. Nobody in recorded history has successfully set the clock on a VCR. It has been flashing 12:00 since 1987 and it will be flashing 12:00 at your funeral. Make peace with it.
Where did all the video shops go?
DVD, then streaming, then the void. The last Blockbuster on Earth is in Bend, Oregon, and it is now a tourist attraction. That part is not a joke, which is somehow the saddest punchline on this entire website.
What is 'tracking'?
A dial on the VCR you nudged back and forth to stop the picture dissolving into a snowstorm of static. It built character. Nobody under thirty will ever know the quiet triumph of getting the tracking just right.
Why are the prices so low?
Two reasons. One, we made them up. Two, most VHS tapes really are worth about a dollar. The two facts are not unrelated.
Can I watch these on my phone?
Not the tapes, no. A tape requires a VCR, ideally a chunky CRT television, and a tolerance for tracking adjustment that modern audiences simply do not possess.
Do you have [obscure film I loved as a child]?
Possibly. Check the letter it starts with, or hit the All page and scroll like it is 1999 and you have nothing but time. If it is not there yet, it might turn up. The raptor works in mysterious ways.
Is this legal?
Yes. We link to public eBay searches and write jokes about old films. No velociraptors were harmed and no lawyers were consulted, which are two very different things.
Can I request a movie be added?
You can shout the title at your monitor, which is about as effective as any other method available to you. Tapes get added when the mood takes us and the raptor signs off on it.
Can I get my Jaws tape autographed by Steven Spielberg?
I guess?
Is there a dark mode?
The entire site is best described as a light mode having a breakdown. There is no dark mode. There is only this.
Why do you not include cover art or other images of each movie?
A deliberate performance decision. Images are heavy, and heavy pages score poorly on Google's Core Web Vitals, which suppresses organic search rankings. By keeping every page lean and text-first, we maintain an excellent PageSpeed Insights score and maximise crawl efficiency and time-to-first-byte. It is a tactical SEO play. (That, and we could not clear the rights to a single frame of any of these films. But mainly the SEO.)
Where is the search bar?
There isn't one. It is 1998. You will browse by letter, by category, or by sheer determination, the way our ancestors did.
My kids have never seen a VHS tape. What do I do?
Hand one to them and watch the dawning confusion as they try to swipe it and pinch to zoom. Then explain that you once had to rewind your entertainment by hand. They will not believe you, and honestly, fair enough.
Do you accept Betamax?
We do not accept, stock, or acknowledge Betamax. It lost the format war and we have all agreed to move on. We are, however, quietly sorry for your loss.
What is your returns policy?
We have never actually sold you anything, so our returns policy is spiritual at best. Take it up with eBay, or with the wider universe.
Do you have any movies from this century?
No. As far as we are concerned the century ended somewhere around the release of The Matrix. Everything after that is on a format we politely decline to recognise.
Do you see VHS having a resurgence? I keep seeing YouTube videos of people ditching streaming and building a little retro corner.
Genuinely, yes. There is a real and growing movement of people stepping off the algorithm and the endless scroll in favour of physical media they actually own: the ritual of picking a tape off a shelf, a fixed runtime with no 'are you still watching', and the quiet fact that nobody can revoke your copy or edit it after the fact. The tapes you buy are yours forever, the artwork is glorious, and there is something honest about a format that cannot spy on you. So yes, we are quietly optimistic. And now, two questions back at you: what is streaming, and what is YouTube?
Why is everything so loud and bright?
It is 1998. Restraint had not been invented yet. That arrived later, with the DVD menu and the flat white.
How do I print this page?
File, then Print. Ensure the printer has paper, that the ink ribbon is seated correctly, and that everyone in the house understands the phone line will be unavailable for the duration.
Do you have a phone number?
Yes, but the modem is using the line.
Do you ship internationally?
We do not ship domestically.
Can I visit your offices?
Please don't.
What is your privacy policy?
We could not track you if we wanted to. We can barely track the picture.
Are you Y2K compliant?
We will all find out together at midnight on December 31, 1999. Bring a torch.
Why does it say 'Under Construction'?
Every page on the internet is under construction. Please enjoy the little animated man digging... oh. It appears we forgot to include that gif. Please imagine the little animated man digging.
How many people visit this site?
Genuinely unsure. There is a real visitor counter at the foot of the homepage, wired to a Cloudflare edge function and a small key-value store. If that number is still stuck near its starting value and stubbornly refusing to climb, it means the counter has not deployed correctly and we have some plumbing to sort out. We will get onto that. It is, for the record, the one thing on this entire website that is genuinely trying its best.
Why do old tapes start with ten minutes of trailers?
Because skipping them meant holding down fast-forward and guessing, and nobody trusted themselves not to overshoot the start of the film. So we all just watched them, every single time, which is why an entire generation carries vivid memories of trailers for films they never actually saw. The system was ridiculous and we miss it.
The last twenty minutes of my movie is somebody's wedding. Why?
Ah. Someone in your household taped over the end of the film, probably in 1996, almost certainly by accident. There is no fix. The good news is that the wedding is now part of the movie, and frankly some films are improved by it.
What is the small plastic sports car on my parents' shelf with a slot in it?
A tape rewinder. Rewinding in the VCR wore its motor out ever so slightly, so the accessory industry sold a second machine that did nothing but rewind, and for reasons lost to history it was usually shaped like a Lamborghini. This is all true.
Are you part of a webring?
We applied to three. Two never wrote back, and the third dissolved before our acceptance could be processed. If you run a VHS-related webring and wish to discuss it, do not contact us, because as established elsewhere in this FAQ, you cannot.
Do you charge late fees?
No, but only because we never gave you anything to return. Late fees were the secret engine of the entire rental industry; Blockbuster was at one point reportedly collecting hundreds of millions of dollars a year in them. If it would help you feel at home, imagine you owe us $4.40 and carry that feeling with you all week.
Do I need a membership card?
No, though we understand missing it. Joining a video shop once required two forms of ID, a utility bill, and a laminated card that then lived in your wallet for a decade. It was the closest most of us ever came to belonging to a club. eBay just lets anyone in.
What do SP, LP and EP mean on my VCR?
Recording speeds. SP (Standard Play) ran the tape fastest and looked best. LP (Long Play) halved the speed to double the recording time. EP (Extended Play) crammed three times as much onto one cassette by slowing the tape to a crawl, and the picture paid for every minute of it. If a home-recorded tape looks like it was filmed through a sock, it was probably EP.
Will a tape from <some other country> play in my VCR?
It depends where you and the tape each are. The world never agreed on a single video standard: North America and Japan used NTSC, much of Europe and elsewhere used PAL, and France and a few others used SECAM. They differ in frame rate and line count, so a tape from the wrong system, played on a machine built for another, comes out as rolling black-and-white soup, if it plays at all. Multi-system VCRs existed for exactly this. The standards never reconciled, and now it is too late.
What does 'This film has been formatted to fit your screen' mean?
It means someone cropped a widescreen film down to the square shape of your television, throwing away as much as half of every shot. The technique is called pan and scan, and it is why two people having a conversation on VHS often appear as two noses at opposite edges of the frame. The director did not approve this. The director was not asked.
How should I store my tapes?
Upright like books, fully rewound, somewhere cool, dry and dark, and well away from anything magnetic, which includes large speakers and the top of the television, the two places everyone put them. Not the garage. Not the attic. Treat each tape like a slightly fussy houseplant that hates sunlight, moisture, and Queen at high volume.
There are white powdery specks inside my tape. Is that bad?
Yes. That is mould, and the one rule of tape mould is: do not play it. The mould will wipe itself onto your VCR's heads and from there onto every clean tape you play afterwards, like a very slow zombie film. Quarantine the cassette, and if the film matters, a specialist can sometimes clean it. If the film is Police Academy 5, let it go.
What is the little broken tab on the back edge of the cassette?
A record-protection tab. Snapping it out made the tape impossible to record over, which is why pre-recorded films came with it already removed. The workaround, known to every child of the era, was a piece of sticky tape over the hole, at which point your copy of E.T. quietly became your dad's copy of the 1994 Grand Final. See also: somebody's wedding, above.
Will my tapes last forever?
No, and we say this with love. The magnetic signal on a tape fades over the decades, and every viewing wears it a little further. Commercial films can be replaced, but home movies cannot, so if there is a tape of someone you love on that shelf, copy it onto a fresh cassette now, tonight, before another year of quiet fading. An analogue copy loses a little quality with each generation, but a faded copy beats a perfect memory of a tape that no longer plays. This is the only sincere answer on this page.
This FAQ is far too long and, frankly, ridiculous.
Agreed. But once again, that is not a question.