DALLAS — What's the most you would spend on a VHS nowadays? What if it was a near-mint condition VHS owned by one of the actors in the movie?
Well, one New York collector at a Dallas auction was willing to drop $75,000 on a sealed copy of "Back to the Future" owned by Tom Wilson, who played Biff Tannen in the movie.
That deal set a new auction record for highest price ever paid at auction for a sealed, graded VHS, a Heritage Auctions press release stated.
The sale featured 260 VHS tapes and drew nearly 600 bidders from around the world, raising $584,750. Copies of "Back to the Future II" and "Back to the Future III" also sold at the auction, for $16,250 and $13,750 respectively. A boxed VHS set of the whole trilogy also sold for $10,000.
“This is the first box set sent out from the studio of the Back to the Future trilogy," Wilson told Heritage Auctions. “The urge to open this, to open the shrink wrap, to me, was nearly unbearable, because not only does it include Back to the Future I and II and – mint – but also the documentary Secrets of the Back to the Future Trilogy.”
Wilson wrote notes with each of the tapes and offered to sign each container for winning bidders.
Several other VHS tapes were sold as well, including ones for "The Goonies" and "Jaws."
“The results for Tom Wilson's Back to the Future tapes, for Goonies and Jaws and Ghostbusters and many others, were nothing short of amazing,” VHS Consignment Director Jay Carlson told Heritage Auctions. “VHS collectors have never gone away, but interest in sealed VHS has blossomed in a way few could have imagined over the last couple of years. A few years ago, sealed VHS collectors were outliers in the collecting community, so it really is something to see it grow and attract enough new collectors to warrant a standalone auction at a major auction house. Based on everything I've seen today, VHS and home media have a bright future, and Heritage is just getting started.”