What should I do with my old VHS tapes?

I'd buy them, or at least some of them if I lived closer...postage might be a bit prohibitive to Australia.

Take them to the children's ward at the hospital, or some women's shelters. The kids enjoy watching the tapes as an escape and often become attached and want to take them home.

I have two words for you miamilady..... "Summer Igloo". Yep, you heard me! I'd be stacking those suckers up into an igloo shaped abode for hours of backyard fun! But if you wish to be conscientious about it all rather than frivolous, my suggestion would be to hand them over to the Red Cross or the equivalent like you've already questioned. They could possibly sell them out of one of their thrift stores and make a few bucks. Just make sure there's nothing on any of the tapes that shouldn't be seen! lol.

Yes Goodwill takes them and I have found some really good movies there that can't be found anywhere else. They sell most for $1.99, I have never gotten a bad one there and if you do they will take it back. They have tons of them at the local store here. It gives soem that are on fixed or low income the chance to buy movies that they could not afford. My husband likes his vcr and so we have always kept it so he can play his older movies. Please don't throw them in the trash there are a lot of people that could get some enjoyment out of them.

Why not auction them off at ebay? A lot of people do that, usually offering a batch of the tapes, not just singular ones. Only problem is VHS tapes don't seem to be big sellers there, but you could still give it a shot

Yes, the best option is to donate them to recycling centers. They might find something useful from the parts of the tapes. If only you're near farmers in rural areas in developing countries (and surely you're not), resourceful farmers use the ribbons to drive away birds that eat grains from their rice fields. They spread out the ribbons onto the fields hoping that the glaze, flash or glow from the ribbons will scare the birds.

Well, you could list these on Craigslist for $1 each to make a little $$, and see if you can sell some this way. Or you could join a Freecycle group in your area and give your movies away that way, or ask a Goodwill, etc. if they would want them. All I know is it is getting hard to decide what to do with these for sure.

No one uses a VCR anymore. But there are places that convert the tapes to DVDs. So, if it's a home video, you might want to convert it to a DVD. But if it's trash, I'm sure these people will know where to dispose them. Last week, there was a drive by some school kids where they were collecting old video tapes, CDs, floppy disks, batteries, etc. They said some organization was collecting them and disposing them in the right way without harming nature.

Garage sale... Goodwill... Stuff, etc. Half-Off Books. There's lots of places that'll take those videos.

I would most definately donate them to the library or to GoodWill... the tax writeoff you are going to get would be more than selling the tapes for $1 and it is a lot easier to do and there are people that can still enjoy the tapes (and more than just one family)! Thanks Zelo

One word Ebay. You may have a title a person has been looking for the longest time. it could be a good way to make some money. Don't throw them away. If you don't want to go to Ebay, check your local library.at At library they you can check out Vhs and they also have book sales where they sell old Vhs tapes.

I put mine in a consignment auction. I sell on ebay and go to a lot of auctions. There is always use-able stuff that I cannot use or sell. I cleaned out my Dad's Entertainment center and there were at least 100 tapes that my mother had taped movies on from cable or from the Dish. There were also store bought tapes that were no longer of interest to anyone in the family. I think I only got $5.00 a flat(about 15 tapes) but it was more than I would have received giving them to goodwill and all I had to do was store them until it was time for my consignment auction. By the way after all of the auctioneer fees I still made $125.00. It was worth it and the stuff is gone now. Good luck with your tapes.

You could try to sell them as a lot on ebay...groups of 5 or 10 or even donate them to a libary. I sold most of the ones i had to get rid of at a garage sale last year for 50 cents to a dollar a peice depending on the day and how much i didnt want to cart everything back in (plus if someone says i'll give ya fifty cents for it id say ok if they werent afraid to ask) Other than that you could offer them to family, friends or someone u know who is having a garage sale soon.

Keep them. They will be worth more money someday. Look at the reg nintendo. some games are worth over $70 bucks already. And some others go higher. All the stuff that is replaces that people think they should get rid of come around to value again.

I would take them to Goodwill, Salvation Army, or another second hand store. If you have some that have not been replaced by Dvds, and you are so desperate to watch them, then maybe you can get a used vhs player at Goodwill. I know what happened when Beta was replaced by VHS. We were gradually replacing ours. Now what is happened is the they have Blu-ray and regular DVDs, so no matter what there is this problem of replacement.

I'm in the same spot and here's what I'm doing. I have about 500 VHS tapes, most with movies on them and a couple with family events. The family events I'm having burned from the VHS to a DVD. The movies I have made a list of all the ones I really want to replace and each month we buy 2-3 on DVD. All the tapes are going in the garbage. Their not of good quality so I doubt anyone would want to buy them so although it's a waste to throw them out, they did serve their purpose. As to the VCR, you can get a combo set that has a VHS/DVD player but as cheap as some DVD's are (you can find them for 99 cents on Ebay) it's really easier to replace them. [b]~~AT PEACE WITHIN~~ **STAND STRONG IN YOUR BELIEFS**[/b]

My suggestion is keep them and store them somewhere safe. Soon enough VHS is soon going to be something of the past. My adivce keep them for memories, and invest in a cheap vcr, (VCR's are already cheap as it is) for playback once in a while.

I don't know what to do with these, will look at the feed back you get, we have many also.

Hi, There are also many VHS tapes in my house. All the VCR in the house broke down so the tapes are useless. I don't think anyone will want to buy those old tapes. I will dump it in the near future. Most people watch discs now and videos are easily available for free over the Internet.

I agree with the others! Create a backup of everything before throwing them in the trash. Convert it to DVD, or put it in a hard disk for safe keeping. Memories are too precious to just throw away. ;) We've lots of VHS tapes here too, most of them containing videos of our childhood. Unfortunately we haven't converted them yet. Good thing you reminded me by creating this post. Thanks! :D