Your Old VHS Tapes Could Be Worth Thousands Of Dollars

Long before streaming, and prior to DVDs, there were VHS cassette tapes. Often found scattered around a VCR or stacked nicely on nearby shelves, the tapes were how people in the '80s and '90s would watch movies at home. These days though, they are pretty much obsolete and wind up selling for pennies at garage sales or just being thrown in the trash. However, some of those tapes are actually incredibly valuable.

If you have VHS copies of some classic films, you might be sitting on a small jackpot. Movies like Back to the Future, The Fast and the Furious, Teen Wolf, Gremlins are selling for $1,000, while First Blood, Halloween II, Dumbo, Conan The Barbarian and Taxi Driver are going for between $1,500 and $2,000. Meanwhile, a copy of The Goonies just sold for $4,050 and the VHS for A Nightmare On Elm Street went for $5,000, and some Star Wars VHS tapes are going for over $7,000.

Of course, if your family just recorded a flick off Cinemax, that tape is not going to make you any money. Even if you own the official VHS of a film, you still might not make much. The most valuable VHS cassettes are the ones in the best condition, so if you never opened your copy of Ghostbusters II, you might have a small windfall coming to you.

The tapes also need to have been stored safely. VHS can degrade over time, but if they are kept in cool, dry places, not in direct sunlight, they fare much better. Cassettes left out in humid or hot areas probably aren't doing so great now. Neither are ones that were played a bunch of times.

No matter the condition of your tapes, you can always try unloading them on eBay. According to The Daily Mail, 250,000 VHS tapes are sold on the online selling platform each year, with over $3,000,000 being spent on them.