The ‘Rocky’ VHS trilogy sold for more than $53,000 at auction

Enduring “Rocky” fandom must pack an expensive punch.

The surge in VHS auctions included the massive sale of the Sylvester Stallone-starrer “Rocky” trilogy at $53,750. A February sale at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas marked the return of videotapes. As Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary relive their days at the video store with a VHS-centric podcast, and video production company and YouTube channel Red Letter Media raise more than $80,000 for charity by selling a sealed “Nukie” tape, consumers are hoarding . And especially as content keeps getting pulled from streaming services.

“A man told us he found a sealed first edition of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ at Goodwill,” said Heritage Specialist Jay Carlson, a collector who uses the Instagram account Rare and Sealed. The New York Times. “He paid a quarter.” That’s probably going to cost $20,000.”

Carlson’s first auction in June 2022 brought in more than half a million dollars. The February 2023 auction featured “Rocky,” “Rocky II,” and “Rocky III,” with the trilogy fetching $53,750. A total of 235 cassettes were sold at the auction.

“I said to my wife, ‘I think I can start collecting tapes,'” Carlson explained of the start of his business. “I brought back a piece of my childhood.”

He added: “These tapes are historical artefacts that can sweep you back in time to a place that is at once miles away and yet somehow home. I used to think it was just me, but I’m talking to more and more people who get into it because of the attraction.”

In other collectible VHS news, in January 2023, Red Letter Media executives Mike Stoklasa, Jay Bauman, and Rich Evans destroyed 104 copies of “Nukie” to make their sealed VHS tapes rarer.

“We’re proud to say that we own the world’s largest collection of ‘Nukie’ VHS tapes,” Stoklasa said alongside the video’s caption: “As owners of 1,000 crappy VHS tapes, we were curious. to dig deeper into this trend.”

In a video posted on December 30, the RLM hosts sent a VHS in prime condition to be professionally graded by a third-party service that evaluates tape quality, authenticity and condition. The idea was inspired by the news that a “Back to the Future” VHS sold at auction for $75,000.

A certified “Nukie” VHS sold for $80,600 on eBay on January 6, and the YouTube video has been viewed more than 1.2 million times. Auction money was donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and the Wisconsin Humane Society.

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