For the most part, this might be an issue of a certain movie having a number of releases. But what I'm really after are situations like this:

the evil dead/army of darkness madness.
hitchcock's many box sets (especially the pesky hitchcock presents)
the universal monster movies

In other words, I'm looking to know of movies or movie sets that a person might want to collect, but have no idea either what would be included in the collection or how to most frugally acquire said collection.

I might even decide to make a website to resolve this issue. In fact .... I would.

Are you including TV sets as well?

I'm guessing that what you mean is like with Hitchcock..if you want all of his films in the most definitive versions, what do you get?
There's the Warner Signature Collection, the Universal Masterpiece Collection, the impossible to get OOP Criterion set (what good versions are out there to replace this) and then every other miscelaneous film not in a set out there. I personally wouldn't know where to start to get a complete collection. Evil Dead seems a little simpler, though I guess it depends on what packaging you want and whether you want a digitally modified Evil Dead II and a matted Evil Dead.

well the disney animated classics are popular collector's items, and don't forget the Criterion Collection.

Hammer studios horror films are also highly collectible.

I doubt that it follows what you're looking for but, for me, collecting 3 seasons of STAR TREK, 7 seasons of THE NEXT GENERATION, 7 seasons of DEEP SPACE NINE, 7 seasons of VOYAGER and 4 seasons of ENTERPRISE, all retailing around a whopping $80-$100 each, makes this the hardest series to attempt collecting (and if you consult my DVDTracker list, you'll see I've failed miserably). Oh, and add in the now-rare Best Buy exclusive bonus DVDs for most of these boxed sets and whew!, then you're really screwed!

Disney Treasures

Farscape has been a bit hard to collect with the single discs, double discs, season sets and now Starburst editions. Plus the various editions from around the world.

I'll go with the Twilight Zone volumes.

I thought i'd be clever, and bought volumes 1-4. Then looked online for the rest.

37 volumes.

I don't see why someone would want to collect every version of Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness but that's just me.

X-Files, becaue they're fucking expensive.

I don't think that's what the original poster is proposing. I think he's saying that, with the many versions of each movie out there, it would be difficult to figure out which ones to purchase to get the best possible version of each movie.

That's the way I took his query as well.

Agreed, which is why I don't have these yet.

I might also add alot of the zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, etc). Some of the dead movies are available in different versions which makes it sometimes hard to find the best version or even know which one is the best version.

????

These sets have been on sale numerous times over the last year, at Deep Discount, Amazon and Best Buy. If you haven't picked them up yet, then you have no excuse.

I'd say most BBC or A&E produced sets. The seasons usually have maybe 10 episodes, and many times they're as expensive as Star Trek sets. I cringe every time I see that something I want is coming out under one of those two banners. And they're rarely available at B&M stores, meaning you have to shop online. Thankfully DDD has prices that become fairly decent during the 20% off sale.

I agree with you half-heartedly on this one. There are nine volumes and yes they can be expensive; especially if you don't own any of them to start out. It's always sort of rough collecting a large series like that unless you buy them when they are first released.

fairly recently I started collecting anime, now that's a bitch with all the tv series and direct to video releases it's hard as hell to even know chronological order to some of the stuff and as far as collecting Inu-Yasha........good luck 37 Series DVDs + 4 Movies

The Puppet Master Set from Koch/Full Moon. I found one for $35, sold it for $250, which is the going rate every time it's available online.

True, even at the $50 price point they can be expensive if you try to buy them all at once. But between the DDD sale every 6 months and the other sales, it shouldn't be that difficult to piecemeal them. Especially since many fans collect up until the movie and then stop.

As for anime, I'm glad that's something I don't collect. Anime get the hardest treatment when it comes to STG (screw the geeks). Sci-fi fans get it bad with things like Star Trek, but the anime fans get charged outrageous prices for DVD's. Especially Dragon Ball. A guy I used to talk to at the local Gamestop was pissed because he had finally finished his collection, and then he found out that many of the eps were being re-released with more footage.

Complete series of many long-running tv shows can get ridiculously expensive.

you can buy X-Files sets over here for around $40au which is cheap as

kurosawa movies....plenty of them...most criterions...and 20-35 bucks each easy...

When I first started buying DVDs I thought buying the Bond movies was a pain because they were expensive and hard to find for decent prices. They've since been rereleased cheaper than their original prices, but 5 years ago when I first started buying DVDs I seldom found them for less than $20, and usually more than $20. While I'm looking forward to the eventual rerelease set with commenaries and better PQ, I'm sure not looking forward to the $400ish price tag.

Criterions are pretty hard to collect because some are OOP and will be very expensive to get.

Aside from collections that are OOP, how are any 'hard' to collect? If it's a matter of finding which discs are the best versions available, that info is all online - mainly right here on this very website. If it's a cost issue, you save up money and purchase slowly.

Focused research and saving are part of what makes it 'collecting' and not just buying a bunch of DVDs. You know what I mean?

Starting any set collection seems hard at first, but it's not if you stick with it. For instance, I jumped on the MGM Midnite Movies discs when they were introduced and have gotten everyone I wanted to collect. Easy, because it was buy as you go from the beginning. However, I never had much interest in Hammer horror films until about 6 months ago. There's a ton of Hammer horror out there. Very intimidating to try and "own it all." What I've done since that time is saved, purchased the major sets (Warner, Universal) and have been buying the rest of them disc by disc when I see them at a decent price when I'm shopping online or at a B&M. Now I've got a very decent Hammer collection. It's not complete, but it's extremely well rounded at this point.

I hope this post isn't looked at as a thread crap, because it's not meant to be at all. I've got more DVDs than I care to count now (1100+) and have been buying them long enough that I've got all the catalog titles I want for the most part. Now the only thing for me are new releases that I may want (few and far between) and making an effort at building sets like the ones mentioned above, directors, etc. so I've given this a lot of thought already when formulating my own collecting strategies.

Like I said, it's just research and saving up; and 99% of the research has already been done for you, it's just a matter of asking on a forum like here, or using IMDB.

Then they're not a fan.