Hokeyboy

I've really never felt shame for any of my hobbies, interests, or collections, and I was an RPG/comics/scifi nerd in the 80s, when Geekdom was never "cool". Reading a Starlog in the 6th grade lunchroom was an invitation to an ass-beating. So shame has never been an issue.

Overwhelmed? Ehh. Back in the DVD heyday though, I'd be at the Best Buy every Tuesday scooping up the new releases; back then, I was in my late 20s/early 30s, single, professional, with a ton of disposable income. Lots of blind buys and the like. I probably could have done without, say, a third of what I ending up buying. They ended up sold, traded in somewhere, or just plain tossed when I moved into a condo with my wife.

OldBoy

nah. I got rid of my dvd collection. They’ll bury me with my blus. Those I’m keeping and will still get the chosen few. At least for now

Nick Danger

I learned from library book sales that a low price alone doesn't make a good deal. Yes they would sell me grocery bags of books for $3 a bag, but I realized that I had just bought someone else's junk. So when DVDs got cheap, I already knew not to buy titles I would never watch.

DeanoBKN

Ashamed isn't quite the word I would use, but I definitely snapped out of my typical buying habits over the years as my life priorities have changed. I cut off blind buys years ago, which alone saved me a ton of money, and just recently decided to stop the practice of rebuying the same movies over and over again simply because it got released in some fancy Steelbook package limited to x amount of copies worldwide. From now on the only upgrading I will do is if the audio/video presentation got a significant boost.

However at times it's hard not to consider what else I could of done with all that "disposable income". My collection sits at around 700 titles now, but since I got hit with the DVD collection bug in 1998, I've purchased hundreds, if not thousands more.

Hazel Motes

I'm a natural born collector. I have multiple different collecting hobbies. It's fun. Also, I would never part with any of my dvd's unless a proper Blu Ray or UHD 4K replacement came along. I don't care if its a dated transfer. If its a movie I love I'm not going to get rid of it just because my other discs are of a superior quality. I mean, what if I wanna watch said movie? To this day, if I want to watch City of Hope by John Sayles, I fire up my VCR to do so. I also have a couple hundred wrestling tapes that are only available on vhs. I don't get the mindset of getting rid of all your dvd's unless the films themselves aren't your prime motivation for collecting them.

kd5

No. I'm actually quite proud of my collection...

davidh777

Back in the day, I used to get a lot of freebies that I’ve slowly been weeding out, but I have a couple large shelves in the living room plus more in the basement. When guests come and remark on the public shelves, the wife used to say “And we have even more in the basement!” I asked her to stop doing that, because it didn’t strike me as the most comfortable topic just for the sake of maintaining a conversation.

DJariya

I look at it this way. If you're collection is boiling over to the point where you have to put excess movies in multiple boxes and throwing them into storage or in the garage and you haven't watched them in years. You've gone way overboard and you probably won't miss any of them.

That for me is nothing to be proud of. You've spent way too much money on it, which is the case for me and I'm sure many of you.

davidlynchfan

This, I only have nothing but bangers in my collection.

Oldboy, I want your Romero’s Martin so i can ebay it for some bucks if you’re going to trash it.

PhantomStranger

No. I may have some regrets about sinking so much money into it over the years but it has brought me a lot of happiness.

davidlynchfan

^ yup. I think if I ever win a Nobel peace prize or something of high prestige..the first thing I would want to thank is my DVD collection and Not God.

asianxcore

Ashamed? No.

Overwhelmed? Sometimes.

I've only felt overwhelmed by my collection recently as I am looking to move into a bigger place.

Not looking forward to boxing everything up and moving everything again. The first time around took a bit of time, as I moved into my current place about 3+ years ago.

OldBoy

Did I have that? See, I didn’t even know. It’s gone. It’s all gone. I don’t care...

TheDuke

No, because I only have things in my collection I truly enjoy and I have pretty specific tastes which help me to keep from getting too carried away. I enjoy blind buying but I'm never hesitant to sell something if I know I'm never going to watch it again. My collection is predominantly made up of cult movies, and I very rarely watch or buy things made after the 90s. Thankfully there are only so many cult movies out there, so eventually my collecting will slow down I'm sure.

Gizmo

I still remember those pictures...and apparently you do as well.

davidlynchfan

yay, according to the link in your sig. Oh well, I was only 3/4th joking.

morriscroy

This can be easily said of pretty much anything that is cash intensive.

Very easy to have regrets in hindsight. Especially after one "burns out" on a particular hobby which is cash intensive, and one is left with a ton of clutter taking up space.

orangerunner

I think the sense of regret only exists because you have physical evidence of your past spending. Think about how much money people have spent on booze, cigarettes, eating-out, traveling, going out to the movies etc. which are all forms of non-essential spending that do not leave a lingering reminder of how much you paid.

PhantomStranger

When I regret all the money, it's more about how DVD prices collapsed and could have saved myself a tremendous amount of money if I had waited a few years. I didn't think the studios would so quickly move from DVD to BD, or the endless double and triple dipping for even unpopular movies. I would have still bought almost everything I ever collected.

Why So Blu?

There's no shame on my part. Shit, I did feel the sting when DVD hit and killed laserdiscs since that was what I got into first when I started in the workforce more than 20 years ago. The low prices of DVD compared to LD lessened the blow. Then when BD hit, I used the monies from selling off the LDs and DVDs to upgrade. Hell, when I downsized my BD collection a few years ago thanks to the Landlord thread in Otter, I said that would be it for me in terms of new formats. This is why it's taking me longer to get into 4K. I do not want to overpay for new media and new gear.

orangerunner

I think we can all relate when you look through your collection and find a nice, shiny brand new sealed "Day 1!" purchase still in its original shrink-wrap with a $24.95 price sticker and then seeing the exact title at Dollar Tree three years later for a buck.

BobO'Link

Then there are those titles you thought would drop in price but instead went OOP and now command stupid high prices. And you didn't buy a copy...

davidlynchfan

And DVDTalk should be the elephant in the room to be blamed for as well.. I keed, DVDTalk...

OldBoy

This site and this site alone got me started in collecting. Oof!

morriscroy

Not only just the sunk costs of all the cash wasted.

Even worse is coming to the realization of how much of your own time was wasted in researching, searching, procuring, etc ... in addition to just watching something only once or twice. (Time which can't be taken back).