To this day, most people don’t know what you’re talking about when you mention LaserDiscs, (just think record-size DVDs) but I got way more enjoyment from those things than I ever did with that Ford Mustang. I guess I fancied myself some kind of audio/cinephile back then, but with a pauper’s budget, you can never have the “best” gear, so I had to make do with the lower shelf items. Still I loved my laser disc player. At the time, the advertising claimed that resolution was at least twice as good as VHS, and certainly the digital sound could not even be compared. Plus, with proper care they would never degrade unlike VHS. (after doing some research however, I find there is a thing called “laser rot” in which the glue used to seal the two sides of a disc can sometimes oxidize and create “glitches”). It’s always something.
Throughout the 90’s I spent a lot of time at Tower Records and other specialty stores digging through stacks of laser discs, looking for films that I thought I’d need to watch more than once. One of the great selling points of these shiny objects was that they often contained supplemental material as well as secondary audio tracks (voiceovers by the directors, actors, etc) which, for a movie geek was like being given a back stage pass. Discs usually ran in the $25-$30 range, but sometimes the deluxe editions would run up to $100 or more. The LaserDisc Database tells me the MSRP of my collection of 50 discs totals $2448.50.
My player (a Pioneer mid-range model) moved with me several times over its lifetime, but when my house got hit by lightning in Dixon, everything plugged into the ungrounded outlets in my front room got fried. My player went to the scrap heap and the discs themselves were rendered useless. Laser Disc player production ceased in 2001 with the proliferation of the DVD.
My brother in law happened to be cleaning out a closet at his workplace (The University of Texas at Austin) around that time and came across an abandoned laser disc player and sent it to me. It worked fine, and it did give my discs a new lease on life. Unfortunately, it needed a remote control to access some of the cooler features of the machine, so with this handicap combined with the joy and ease of streaming services, Laser Discs were more than obsolete; they were cumbersome and archaic and as my girlfriend recently pointed out… they were in the way.
The idea of just tossing these beautiful discs into a landfill hurts on many levels. Even if they never get played again, surely they can be used to create some sort of art project, right? So, I launch on a quest to recoup some of my investment and to at the very least, find a comfortable home for my beloved laser discs. A quick internet search reveals that most of my titles might fetch me less than a dollar each, but a handful of the titles could fetch up to $50 from the 12 LD collectors scattered across the planet. So if you or anyone you know (or if you know someone who knows someone who) might have an interest in acquiring any of these titles on “Classic” Laser Disc, let me know… I’ve got a bargain for you!
