80s VHS Sold for $80,600 After YouTubers Say They Destroyed 100 Copies

• YouTube channel RedLetterMedia posted a video attempting to drive up the value of a rare VHS tape.
• After years of collecting copies of obscure ’80s movie “Nukie,” they said they destroyed all but one.
• Their final tape of the movie sold for $80,600 on eBay.

A group of YouTubers said they destroyed over 100 copies of a VHS tape as part of an experiment to try and increase its value, and sold the final copy from their collection for $80,600 in an eBay auction.

On December 30, a YouTube channel called RedLetterMedia, which reviews obscure movies, posted a video in which hosts Richard Evans and Mike Stoklasa discussed what they described as a trend of collecting VHS, which led to tapes being sold online for large sums of money.

The caption of the video read, “As the owner’s of 1000s of crappy VHS tapes, we were curious to dig deeper into this trend.”

Inspired by a sealed copy of the movie “Back to the Future” which sold at auction for $75,000 in June 2022, The Hill reported, the duo set out to test what factors made a VHS tape a valuable collectors’ item, and landed on rarity and condition as two of the key factors.

The YouTube channel, which was founded by Stoklasa, an independent filmmaker, has featured a running joke for years where they collected VHS tapes of “Nukie,” a sci-fi movie released in 1987. So they decided to use their collection for the experiment.

Stoklasa described “Nukie” in the video as a “mostly forgotten terrible movie,” adding, “We’re proud to say we very well could be the owners of the world’s largest collection of ‘Nukie’ VHS tapes.”

In the video, they said they selected the copy that appeared to be in the best condition and sent it to be professionally graded — a paid service in which a third party assesses the quality, authenticity, and condition of the tape. 

They said their copy of “Nukie” had been awarded a high score of 8.5 out of 10.

Stoklasa then said they would try to increase the “rarity” of their tape “by destroying every copy of ‘Nukie’ we collected over the last decade” aside from the graded item. In a video uploaded on March 1, 2019, they said they had over 50 copies, but by the time they filmed the video Stoklasa said they had “104 copies” to dispose of.

The pair appear to put these additional copies through a wood chipper, and end the video by saying the final tape had been listed on eBay. Stoklasa said the money would be donated to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and the Wisconsin Humane Society “to show that we’re not actual monsters.”

On January 2, the eBay listing went live. According to the site, after four days and 224 bids, it was sold for $80,600. 

—Red Letter Media (@redlettermedia) January 6, 2023

The video chronicling the experiment was viewed 1.2 million times. Top comments labeled it one of the channel’s best videos of all time and said it was “like some kind of weird performance art.” On Twitter, a post from RedLetterMedia’s account promoting the auction when it had an hour left received over 4,700 likes and fans congratulated them on the result.

Stoklasa does not appear to have publicly commented on the sale of the VHS, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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