The Lion King VHS at 100 euros: the market that won't close

The Lion King on VHS at 100 euros doesn't sell: the market doesn't exist

In 2022, of all years, ads for The Lion King VHS tapes at 100 euros multiplied on Facebook Marketplace and Wallapop until they looked like a solid trend. A basic check is enough to debunk it: on those same sites there are identical copies at 5 euros and 50 cents that can't find a buyer. The sale of old VHS tapes at outrageous prices is not a market: it's a shop window.

The story spreads faster than any real transaction. Even the most commented ad, the one asking 50.000 euros for a tape, is dismissed outright as a joke. But the smaller version —100 euros— is the one that has caught on and keeps the discussion going.

How much do people actually pay for a second-hand VHS?

The short answer is practically nothing. Listed prices are not sale prices, and that distinction is the key to the whole thing. A long list of ads with no transactions to back them up doesn't prove demand: it proves that posting is free.

Those who argue there's a business point to a specific exception: editions with the box in good condition, dubs that no longer exist on DVD or Blu-Ray, or video-store copies from the 1980s. That niche does have buyers. But it's a tiny sustancia ilegal in an ocean of useless tapes. The rest, no matter how much they're listed, gather dust.

The only tapes that might be worth something

The value isn't in the movie —anyone can get it today in better quality— but in the object. The pirated edition, the one released outside the major distributors, is the one that fetches the most. The physical tape with its original video-store sticker, untouched, multiplies its price. A copy of Jaws 3 in a video-store case can reach 100 euros.

There are examples that show where the limit is. An ad for the film Assassins —not the 1995 one— asks 490 euros on Todocolección, with the tagline «TOTAL RARITY» in the title. The cover art, an illustration in the style of a Spectrum game, sells, but it doesn't guarantee anyone will pay it. In the case of Mazinger, the six video-store tapes with four episodes each —with the TVE dubs— are objects of desire; at the time they were already extremely expensive and few video stores had more than three.

There's another reason for the interest: much of Spanish cinema from those decades exists only on VHS or DVD, and some digital film archive projects seek to preserve an image no one will ever produce again. That drive is real. The price, far less so. A full breakdown of which specific editions gain value would make a list too long to fit here.

The physical problem: tape degrades on its own

A tape from 25 years ago put into a player from 25 years ago has a strong chance of never coming back out. Magnetic media degrades from cold, heat, humidity and simply the Earth's magnetic field. A freshly recorded copy already started from abysmal quality; over the years, the signal fades.

Experience points that way. When recovering tapes from the early 90s and running them through a machine rescued from the attic, tonalidad failures appear, images are almost black and white, and noise bands cover the picture. Some hold up. Many don't. And the pool of working players shrinks every year.

1980s prices: 150.000 pesetas for a VCR

Here's the fact that reframes the whole conversation. In the early 1980s, a home VCR cost around 150.000 pesetas, and a Panasonic model could reach 180.000. The minimum wage in the mid-1980s was around 40.000 pesetas. A player was worth more than four minimum salaries.

With that reference, the nostalgia sustaining current prices has a basis: the object was extremely expensive. A Beta tape that broke inside the machine cost 30.000 pesetas at the time. That's why some see a treasure in every tape. The problem is that an object expensive 40 years ago doesn't have to be worth anything today.

From the video game bubble to inflated VHS

The most repeated explanation is imitation. Retro video game collecting pushed prices up for years, and some saw an opportunity to apply the same play to tapes. The scene that sums up the phenomenon has a female buyer entering a video game store to ask if they'll buy her VHS tapes because she's been told they're worth a lot.

It looks more like pure speculation: something with no value is offered at an inflated price in the hope that someone else will pay. In that, VHS behaves like any unsupported asset.

With those ingredients, the mystery isn't why people ask so much for a tape. The mystery is that, year after year, there are still those who confuse an ad with a price.