My grandfather promised me his 1966 Ford Mustang on the occasion of my 16th birthday. The only catch attached to this wondrous bestowment was, I had to go get it. We lived in Rockwall, Texas at the time and the car (and my grandparents) were in San Diego. So, with brand new driver’s license in hand, my dad, my sister and I flew to San Diego and drove the car back to Texas with an overnight stop at the Grand Canyon. (My dad floated the idea of getting up at the crack of dawn to watch the sunrise, but in the wee hours of the morn, the wake up call was ignored). When we finally managed to rouse ourselves, our road trip commenced after a late breakfast and a scant 5 minute viewing of the canyon.
It was definitely a cool car to own. Strangers would often stop me and ask about it, I even had offers from folks who wanted to buy it on the spot. My grandfather was the original owner of the thing, and the glove box even contained the original receipt for it. He bought it in 1966 for $2400. Which is about what I sold it for when I finally decided I had no interest in tinkering with 20 year old engines (or in driving a car without air conditioning).
I sold it to a co-worker in Irving, Texas. It wasn’t in the greatest shape. It needed a paint job and there were rips and stains in the interior (my grandfather’s pipe smoking left a tar stain on the ceiling that could not be removed with gallons of industrial solvents) and there were a few dings on the body and chrome bumpers that definitely devalued the thing. Looking back though, I do think she got the car at quite a bargain.
She paid cash and after work that day, I went to an electronics store and bought a laser disc player and a couple of discs.
Yes, you had to flip them over like a record…
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!
