Before we get into where to find VHS tapes, here’s what I’m actually looking for.
I’m not talking about sealed horror movies, rare commercial releases, Disney tapes, or anything sitting behind glass with a price tag based on an eBay listing.
I’m looking for the weird stuff.
Home recorded television. Local news. Commercial breaks. Public access. Old sporting events. Educational tapes. Corporate training videos. Government and industrial films. Arts programming. Promotional tapes. Local history. Lost media.
The stuff that filled the gap before YouTube existed.
If you wanted to learn an obscure hobby, train a room full of employees, document a local event, promote a tourist attraction, record a lecture, distribute a niche instructional program, or share something with a very small audience, VHS was often how you did it.
A lot of that material was never released widely. Some of it was never digitized. Some of it may exist today only because somebody shoved a tape into a closet and forgot about it for 30 years.
That’s what I’m hunting.
The handwritten tape marked NEWS, TRAINING, SUMMER 1993, or DO NOT ERASE. The local television recording nobody thought was important enough to save. The strange instructional tape from a company that disappeared in 1998. The tape that has absolutely no presence online until somebody puts it in a VCR and figures out what’s actually on it.
Some of the stranger finds are already in the archive.
So where do you find this stuff?
eBay is the obvious answer.
But the real answer isn’t what you think.
Where to find VHS tapes beyond eBay
The Goodwill bins
My best source right now is probably the Goodwill Outlet, better known as the bins.
If you’ve never been to one, it is not the normal Goodwill experience.
Stuff comes out in giant rolling bins. People dig through it. New bins appear. Everybody moves. Every location seems to develop its own rules, pricing, and level of chaos.
Wear gloves, but more importantly, learn your particular outlet. Some charge for certain things individually. Others sell by the pound. Some locations seem to get piles of media. Others barely get any. Learn the rhythm: when new bins roll out, when the media bins tend to appear, what the pricing actually is for tapes.
And don’t get caught up in the excitement and buy everything just because it’s cheap.
When you’re staring into a bin full of unlabeled Maxells, your brain will start trying to convince you that you need all 70 of them. You probably don’t.
The biggest thing with the bins is consistency. Sometimes I walk in and leave with 100 tapes. Sometimes I leave with nothing.
That doesn’t mean the location is bad. It means you got there on a bad day. Come back.
For home recordings specifically, the bins can also be better than normal Goodwill retail stores because tapes sometimes make it through that would never be put on the regular store shelf.
Independent thrift stores
Regular thrift stores are still worth checking, but I tend to favor the smaller ones.
Large chains often have tighter rules about what they will sell. Home recorded tapes may be removed before they ever reach the floor.
Sometimes one sneaks through.
But if you’re specifically hunting weird VHS, smaller thrift stores can be much more interesting.
Think Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul, church thrift stores, regional chains, charity shops, and independent neighborhood stores. The less polished, the better. I’m looking for the places willing to put a little more “junk” on the shelf. Because the junk is the point.
Become a regular
Get to know the people who work there. This matters way more than I realized when I started doing this.
I have places where I can walk in and somebody already has a box or bag of tapes waiting for me. Sometimes they’ll just give them to me because they know nobody else is going to buy them.
You don’t get there by walking in once and announcing that you’re a serious VHS preservationist who needs immediate access to the back room. Just be a good regular.
Talk to people. Learn names. Say thank you. Don’t make their job harder.
Bring some candy or baked goods once in a while because you appreciate them, not because you’re operating an elaborate VHS bribery program.
Eventually, somebody gets a cart full of tapes and thinks of you.
Friends of the Library
Don’t overlook Friends of the Library sales.
These aren’t necessarily where I expect to find somebody’s six-hour recording of Saturday morning cartoons, but they are excellent for another kind of obscure VHS.
Libraries accumulated a lot of video. Educational programs. Local history. Arts programming. Museum videos. Children’s material. Travel tapes. Documentaries from tiny distributors. Instructional programs. Things produced by universities, nonprofits, government agencies, and organizations that never expected to have an audience outside a library.
When libraries clear out old collections, some of that material makes its way to Friends of the Library sales.
And once again: talk to the volunteers.
Tell them you’re looking for old VHS, especially the weird educational stuff. They may know what’s in the back room. They may know what another branch just cleared out. They may have three more boxes that weren’t worth carrying onto the sales floor because nobody else wants them.
When people understand that you’re genuinely interested in the obsolete stuff they’re trying to get rid of, they can become surprisingly enthusiastic about helping you find more.
Stop looking for places that sell VHS
If all you do is search Google Maps for VHS tapes, you’re going to find the same obvious places everybody else finds.
Instead, ask a different question:
Who ends up with old VHS tapes while doing something else?
That question leads to some of the best sources.
Junk stores
You know the place. It isn’t really an antique store. It isn’t really a thrift store. It’s basically some guy who has been collecting stuff for 40 years and eventually acquired a building to put it all in.
Inventory doesn’t necessarily turn over quickly. Nobody has carefully researched everything. There are boxes that haven’t been touched in years.
Ask if they have VHS. Then ask if they have more VHS somewhere else.
The pile in the back is often much more interesting than whatever made it onto the shelf.
Habitat for Humanity ReStores
Most people think of Habitat ReStore as a place to buy cabinets, furniture, appliances, and building supplies.
That’s exactly why a VHS hunter should remember it.
Not every ReStore sells media, but some have books, records, DVDs, and VHS tucked into a corner somewhere. You might find the tape shelf sitting between a ceiling fan and a kitchen cabinet.
Furniture banks
Furniture banks are a perfect example of thinking about where tapes come from rather than who sells tapes.
Some furniture banks and similar organizations receive large household donations or participate in home cleanouts. And when an entire household gets cleared out, you don’t just get furniture.
You get books. Records. Electronics. Boxes from closets. And sometimes VHS tapes.
I’ve seen furniture-focused organizations with little corners full of books, records, and old media simply because those things came along with everything else.
These places probably aren’t advertising themselves as VHS sellers. That’s why they’re worth checking.
Antique malls
I’m talking specifically about the big antique malls where individual vendors rent booths. Those can be surprisingly useful.
A lot of the same people who buy storage units, clean out estates, hit auctions, or generally acquire random stuff eventually rent a booth somewhere.
In some ways, an antique mall is Facebook Marketplace without having to actually use Facebook Marketplace. You can just walk directly into the inventory.
Prices tend to be fixed, which can be a downside, but the bigger opportunity is identifying who has the tapes.
If one booth has 20 interesting VHS tapes, figure out who owns the booth. Grab a card. Ask the front desk if they can connect you.
Because those 20 tapes may not be the only tapes that person has.
The best thing you find in an antique mall might not be a VHS tape. It might be a VHS person.
Electronics recyclers
Electronics recyclers and e-waste companies can be excellent sources for corporate and institutional VHS.
Think about what happens when an office finally clears out a storage room full of old electronics. The CRT gets recycled. The VCR gets recycled. The old training tapes sitting next to them may come along for the ride.
Corporate training programs. Safety videos. Product demonstrations. Internal communications. Industrial material. Things that lived in cabinets for decades.
The problem is access. Many e-cyclers aren’t retail stores. You usually can’t stroll into the warehouse and start digging around. Their rules on access, security, and disposal are theirs, and they exist for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
This one is relationship territory. Ask politely what happens to old videotapes when they receive them. Some companies won’t be able to sell or give anything away. That’s fine.
But if you’re interested in corporate, industrial, or institutional media, this is a world worth trying to get into.
GovDeals
GovDeals is basically VHS hunting combined with government surplus procurement.
Every once in a while, something wonderfully bizarre appears. The problem is logistics.
The interesting listing may be three states away. The eight VHS tapes you want may be sitting on top of an entire pallet of equipment you don’t want. And they probably aren’t going to split the lot.
So before you bid, solve the pickup and disposal problem. Figure out how you’re getting there, what you’re doing with the rest of the pallet, and whether the tapes are worth the trip.
I’ve found government surplus material including a series on how to operate a polygraph machine. That is exactly the kind of nonsense I’m interested in.
But not every pallet is worth adopting because you spotted three VHS tapes in one blurry photograph.
Monitor the listings, search creatively, and pay very close attention to pickup requirements.
Facebook Marketplace
I hate Facebook Marketplace.
There. I said it.
But it works.
Marketplace can connect you with scrappers, storage-unit buyers, cleanout people, resellers, and people who generally encounter large quantities of stuff. Once somebody understands that you’re the weird person who buys old recorded VHS tapes, they may start contacting you whenever they find some.
That can be extremely productive. It can also be exhausting.
Expect vague descriptions. Expect photographs that somehow show everything except the actual tapes. Expect people who don’t understand why you want them. Expect wildly different ideas about what a box of recorded VHS should cost.
And expect a lot of:
Still available? followed by complete silence.
I’ve gotten very good results through Marketplace. I also don’t pursue it nearly as aggressively as I probably could because the people-intensive back-and-forth wears me out.
The opportunity is absolutely there. You just have to decide how much you enjoy living in that world.
Estate sales, yard sales, and flea markets
These are all worth checking, but I wouldn’t build my entire VHS hunting strategy around them.
Estate sales can still be good, especially if you’re already interested in other collectibles. Look at the photos beforehand and plan a route where you can hit several sales. And look at the house. A home full of 1980s electronics, books, magazines, old stereo equipment, and media is more interesting to me than one where everything looks like it was purchased three years ago. You’re looking for households that kept things.
Yard sales used to be much better for me. I just don’t see old VHS showing up there as often as it once did. That doesn’t mean I won’t stop when I see tapes. I will. And always ask if they have more inside. There may be three boxes in the basement that nobody bothered carrying out.
Flea markets are even more of a crapshoot. Big boxes of cheap VHS are heavy, take up space, and aren’t particularly attractive inventory for most vendors. And when tapes do show up, sometimes somebody has decided every one of them is a rare collectible worth $10.
I’ll still look. I just don’t expect much.
What about eBay?
Yes, eBay exists. And if you’ve started hunting home recorded VHS, you’ve probably already looked there.
I still use it, but it can be pretty dead once you factor in shipping. You’re also often looking at someone else’s scraps. The interesting tapes may already have been pulled out, individually listed, priced accordingly, or sold somewhere else.
That doesn’t mean you can’t score. You absolutely can. I’ve developed a few tricks for finding poorly described listings, overlooked lots, sellers who don’t really know what they have, and collections where the interesting tape isn’t the one pictured front and center.
But that’s another article.
Unfortunately, you have to talk to people
Here’s the part I wish I could skip.
Digging through a bin is easy. Talking to strangers is harder.
But if you’re serious about finding this stuff, eventually you have to tell people what you’re looking for.
You don’t need to launch into a ten-minute explanation about lost media preservation. Just say:
“I collect old VHS tapes, especially home recordings and weird educational or training stuff. If you ever get boxes of them, I’m interested.”
That’s enough.
Somebody is going to look at you like you’re strange. Fair. You are asking them to save you someone’s 1991 recording of Wheel of Fortune.
But somebody else is going to say:
“Wait. I think we have a box in the back.”
That’s the person you’re looking for.
And once enough people know what you collect, something starts to change.
You become the VHS person.
The thrift-store volunteer remembers you when six grocery bags of tapes get donated. The Friends of the Library volunteer tells you there’s another box downstairs. The antique dealer calls because somebody cleaned out a house. The furniture-bank employee puts a box aside instead of tossing it. The storage-unit guy sends you a picture before getting rid of them. The e-cycler remembers you when an office cleanout includes two shelves of old training videos.
At some point, you aren’t finding the tapes anymore.
The tapes are starting to find you.
Why these places work
Go back through this list.
The Goodwill bins work because you consistently show up. Small thrift stores get better when people recognize you. Friends of the Library sales get better when volunteers know what you’re hunting. Antique malls introduce you to resellers. Marketplace introduces you to scrappers and cleanout people. E-cyclers become useful once you know somebody who can tell you what happens to old media. Even estate sales get better when people running them understand what you’re interested in.
See what all of this has in common?
People and connections.
Finding home recorded and obscure VHS isn’t really about discovering some secret store nobody else knows about. It’s about becoming known as the person who wants the stuff everybody else is getting rid of.
You’re still going to dig through bins. You’re still going to drive across town and find six copies of Titanic and one moldy Tae Bo tape. You’re still going to come home empty-handed sometimes.
But every conversation adds another little branch to your network. Eventually somebody sees a dusty box of VHS tapes in a basement, warehouse, library, thrift store, or back room and thinks:
“I know a guy who wants these.”
That’s the goal.
The tapes find you.
Have a box of recorded VHS tapes you are ready to move on from? Send me a note.
VHS hunting checklist
- [ ] Find your nearest Goodwill Outlet.
- [ ] Learn how that outlet prices media.
- [ ] Identify several independent thrift stores in your area.
- [ ] Search for Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul, church thrift stores, and local charity shops.
- [ ] Find Friends of the Library sales and used-book stores.
- [ ] Check Habitat for Humanity ReStores.
- [ ] Search for furniture banks and household donation centers.
- [ ] Search Maps for junk stores, resale warehouses, and liquidation stores.
- [ ] Find vendor-based antique malls.
- [ ] Search for electronics recyclers and e-waste companies.
- [ ] Check GovDeals and other government surplus listings.
- [ ] Solve pickup and disposal logistics before bidding on a GovDeals lot.
- [ ] Check Facebook Marketplace for home recorded VHS and tape lots.
- [ ] Review estate-sale photos before heading out.
- [ ] Check yard sales and flea markets when you’re already nearby.
- [ ] Ask whether there are more tapes in the back.
- [ ] Tell store employees and volunteers what kind of tapes you’re looking for.
- [ ] Get contact information from promising resellers and antique-mall vendors.
- [ ] Be willing to leave empty-handed.
- [ ] Come back again.