Gap Filling and the Minefield of Second Hand Videos

I realised a few days ago that I’m this close (imagine a finger a thumb a small but not incredibly small distance apart) from completing my Doctor Who video collection. I’ve got the “missing” stories on tape courtesy of UKGold but I’m at that age now where it MATTERS to me that they don’t have the beginning and end credits in the right places. It MATTERS to me when they do one of their edit jobs and cut away from the cliffhanger early so as to remove the musical sting. It MATTERS to me that there are logos in one corner or another. It MATTERS to me that there are adverts. It MATTERS to me that I know the continuity announcement preceding Terror of the Vervoids. It matters to me enough that I’ve decided to fill as many of the gaps as I can.

But within reason.

The sellers of Doctor Who products seem to fall into three camps when it comes to ripping people off.

1. Those who create the kind of exclusive and highly collectable merchandise that my poor quality spoofs in the Karfel Productions section seek to ridicule. Who in their right mind (and apologies if anyone reading this has bought one) would want a laser etching of Colin Baker’s face which looks more like a cross between the late Road Warrior Hawk and the equally late Rumpole of the Bailey?

2. Those who create limited editions of products with the sole intention of creating something rare and valuable which simply MUST be snapped up immediately or you will be hunting round until your brother’s children are old and grey.

3. Those who pick up or hoard old stuff and flog it when it becomes valuable. They are aided in this by a book called the Transcendental Toyroom by a man who, by an interesting coincidence, might not be unadjacent to the person I had in mind in point two.

I was in Manchester on Sunday as I so often am. I had five spare minutes so I popped into a second hand book ‘n’ video shop called Paramount. It’s been there forever even when covered in scaffolding and surrounded by buildings which are being demolished, rebuilt or gentrified. Paramount is where I got most of my second hand Who videos a decade ago. Golly. Is it really a decade ago? Yup, ‘fraid so. Well anyway, that’s where I got most of them from. They started out at £6 each. They had that slightly dirty quality that second hand videos often have. You couldn’t quite imagine them getting into that state in someone’s house so it must be the shops. Or the shop keeper. I won’t deny that I was aware that there were dirty products of another kind elsewhere in that shop and those around it (for this portion of Manchester was briefly a haven of second hand book ‘n’ video shops, most of which have now closed down).

My first brush with the more Thatcherite side of commerce came when I found both volumes of The War Games in Paramount one Saturday afternoon. We were filling time while grandmother visited grandfather in hospital – which means it must’ve been the summer of 1993 – and the tapes were unlabelled. His Who tapes were £6 each. All of them. But he sensed (for I have no poker face) that I was keen and he bumped the price up accordingly. Only to £8 for he must’ve sensed I was keen but broke.

I was back there, as I say, this past Sunday and noticed he had a whole case of Who videos. He had a couple that I was looking to get on eBay – Planet of the Spiders and the Sontaran Experiment. I was interested though experience has taught me that you win those eBay auctions that you want to lose and lose those that you want to win. Only by buying the tapes in a shop could I be sure of victory. He wanted £50 each for them. Hmm – perchance a little excessive. I looked at the other tapes he had and they were all sizably priced. Then I realised something. He didn’t understand the market as well as he thought he did. I had assumed he was clued up that these videos had more value than, say, a similarly aged Star Trek tape. But when a guy is charging £30 for a rather dirty old VHS copy of Talons of Weng Chiang you know he’s missed out the all important DVD factor. Fans may be stupid (I know I am… damn – there’s a catchphrase from the rarely remembered “The Sunday Show” and a woman called Jenny Something that I bet only her parents remember) but they are not that stupid and those who are deserve all they get. Videos are not like books – there is little or no value in a first edition.

So I’ve set myself a rule of thumb – I won’t pay more than a tape cost in the first place. Including P&P. Because I’m not desperate to buy them and I’m not ruthless enough to be a buyer-seller. When I buy Planet of the Spiders, the Sontaran Experiment and the other dozen tapes on my list I will be paying what they are worth not what someone else wants them to be worth. And if that means that I won’t ever get a copy of Hand of Fear then so be it. If needs be I can buy it from Amazon.com and put up with an NTSC picture. Technology has improved to the point where the difference is less and less noticeable.

Post script – I got two parcels this morning which were wrapped in such a manner that I’m sure my postie now thinks I’m a drug dealer. I had an expensive weekend on eBay and picked up half a dozen tapes. All for less than they would’ve cost back in the olden days when you could buy them in proper shops. eBay is a strange beast – Invasion of the Dinosaurs can get as high as £29 (plus P&P) while a copy of Masque of Mandragora can be obtained for less than £6. And, as the Latins used to say, vice versa.

3rd March 2004