Disney has a ?Black Diamond? label.
This is also true. Many of the most popular Walt Disney titles were published or rereleased under a line of tapes that featured a black diamond logo on the spine with the words ?The Classics? emblazoned on top. Unlike the famously valuable upside-down biplane stamp or the F*** Face Billy Ripkin baseball card, these were not mistakenly printed. No, these popular titles were released purposefully. How many? I don?t know. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? It?s safe to say? a lot. In fact, I would venture a bet that if you or your family had more than two Disney VHS tapes during the ?90s, at least one of them was of the (insert ominous music) ?Black Diamond? variety.
OK, so if there?s an element of truth to this, then how did it all get started?
Well, there was actually a point in time when certain Disney videos were worth a respectable amount of money. It may be hard to believe, but there was a time period before on-demand streaming allowed you to watch what you want, when you want, and some entertainment properties were hard to come by. In the new millennium, when DVDs were still relatively new to many families, there were many titles that existed only on VHS. Disney actually had a slew of movies and cartoons that a generation of children grew up on that were no longer available (or what we former video store employees called OOP, or out of print).
Sure, some of the classics like Dumbo or Pinocchio had recently been ported over to a new VHS production in the late ?90s, or some, like the previously mentioned The Little Mermaid had actually made the jump to DVD. However, if you wanted to watch Condorman, The Black Hole, or Darby O?Gill and the Little People, you were limited to the first-run VHS clamshells Disney released way back in the early ?80s during the first home video boom.
By that post-millennium DVD era, video stores had mostly gotten rid of those titles, so the only way to ease these nostalgic urges was to hit the collector market. (In 2001, I personally sold a used, original VHS copy of The Gnome Mobile on eBay for close to $300. Not anywhere near the alleged $10,000 these ?Black Diamond? VHS tapes are supposedly commanding, but nothing to sneeze at either.)
Once those lesser-known titles finally made it to DVD, the price of those clunky VHS versions completely bottomed out. Unfortunately, some of that perceived value of VHS tapes gripped a large portion of the population and never let go. People believed they were sitting on a gold mine. The collector community still exists for those hard-to-find movies that still only exist in videocassette form (Remember Rad, anyone?). As those collectors searched listings for a diamond in the rough (no pun intended), they would repeatedly see people who were selling their totally common copies of The Lion King for waaaay too much money. Those frustrated collectors with useless listings clogging up their searches reacted the only way they could: with humor and a little bit of trolling.
It?s unclear when, but in an attempt to poke fun at these ludicrous values placed on copies of 101 Dalmatians and The Rescuers Down Under, collectors started posting fake eBay listings for these supposedly ?rare? VHS movies for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. They even added to the mystique of these ?priceless wonders? (of which millions of Americans owned at least 3 each) by designating them with the exclusive sounding ?Black Diamond? moniker. However, instead of recognizing a joke, ordinary people saw these listings and thought that they too should get in on the action. Though the jokesters are probably long gone, we are now in a continuous cycle of people trying to sell their dollar-bin movies for exorbitant prices, while ?journalists? pick up the story of ordinary people potentially sitting on a VHS goldmine. And that?s it.
For what it?s worth, I still collect VHS tapes. There are still plenty of movies (especially really quirky ones) that were only ever released on the now-dead format. With most VHS tapes available in thrift store bins for a dollar or less, it is a hobby that provides a great ?thrill of the hunt? vibe while being an affordable access to entry. Unfortunately, if you?re looking to get rich, VHS tapes aren?t your answer. If you grew up watching any of those ?Black Diamond? Disney movies, the value isn?t in the tape itself but rather the (hopefully) fond memories you have watching them.
Those? Yep. They?re priceless.