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[Dave1442397]

^^^ Nice looking set! Great design work there.

[TacomaDiver]

Probably not the typical fare for the kinds of books we collect, but these arrived the other day - not for my wife, but for me.

Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy:

Book One: The Bear and the Nightingale
Bear.jpg

Book Two: The Girl in the Tower
Girl.jpg

Book Three: The Winter of the Witch
Winter.jpg

Each book also has color matched sprayed edges:
IMG_6395.jpg

The quality is probably on par with any trade edition, but I really like how they turned out. I also have signed trade editions from when I met Katherine Arden at Emerald City Comic Con back in 2019. (She also knocked over her water bottle while signing, my books weren't ruined, but I got one hell of a unique inscription!)

I paid about $130 after shipping (from England - shipped on Friday, arrived on Tuesday!) and the eBay prices are already out of their minds. Not sure if any have sold for what people are asking for them, but damn!

[mhatchett]

My copy of Wolfen arrived today. What a nice book. Glad the story got a nice special edition, it deserved it. The movie is not half bad either.

[Ben Staad]

Thank you. I am tickled to have won such a nice book.

Congratulations!

[Martin]

Not a purchase or purchases. These both came in today and both were gifts. One from Suntup and one straight from the Author.

Artist Edition of Replay and signed PB of These I Know by Heart 20th Anniversary Edition by Brian A. Hopkins. Feeling doubly blessed today.

Replay and BAH.jpg

Congratulations!

[Ben Staad]

Not a purchase or purchases. These both came in today and both were gifts. One from Suntup and one straight from the Author.

Artist Edition of Replay and signed PB of These I Know by Heart 20th Anniversary Edition by Brian A. Hopkins. Feeling doubly blessed today.

Replay and BAH.jpg

[TacomaDiver]

Parents owned a laserdisc player but I think they bought it at the tale end of the LD high. Almost overnight -it seemed- everyone else owned VHS players and nobody local rented LD's. They had to drive to the adjacent town just to rent discs. Think we owned it less than a year before switching to a VCR.

When I lived in San Diego, there was a store that rented laserdiscs. Since LD wasn't region locked, they had a ton of discs from Japan so I got my first real introduction to Anime (and finally saw Pulp Fiction for the first time - for whatever reason, there was no domestic LD release of this movie at the time.) Quite a few discs you had to put a pretty good deposit down on due to their costs.

Good times.

[TacomaDiver]

What no love for Betamax? Still waiting for Sony to try and bring it back.

When we lived in the Philippines, we had a significant collection of both VHS and Beta tapes. It's too bad Beta didn't get a good foothold in the industry, it is technically a better format.

After I moved back stateside, I'm pretty sure we were the only people with a Betamax machine - I never met anyone who had one, and very few people were even aware of the format

[mhatchett]

I remember TV rentals when I was young. I think it depended on what part of the country you grew up in.

[Ben Staad]

How interesting. Thank you for sharing.

This was in Ireland. Any consumer electronics item was very expensive, and it was typical for most people to rent TVs. We actually used to trade the B&W TV for a Color TV just for the Christmas season It was probably the mid-'80s when my dad actually bought a TV. I think the tax laws changed, and prices dropped.

My friend's father owned the TV store that we all rented from. He was a smart businessman. He had the rental/sales store, and then he saw the VCR coming, and converted half the store to VHS rentals. When he saw the big rental chains coming, he sold off all the VHS tapes and moved to selling computers, etc. When online sales started to rise, he sold the physical store and went into the supply side of the business, running a chain of warehouses. He was very good at seeing trends and not sticking with old business models.

[Dave1442397]

Never heard of renting a TV. I was young but alive in 1980.

This was in Ireland. Any consumer electronics item was very expensive, and it was typical for most people to rent TVs. We actually used to trade the B&W TV for a Color TV just for the Christmas season It was probably the mid-'80s when my dad actually bought a TV. I think the tax laws changed, and prices dropped.

My friend's father owned the TV store that we all rented from. He was a smart businessman. He had the rental/sales store, and then he saw the VCR coming, and converted half the store to VHS rentals. When he saw the big rental chains coming, he sold off all the VHS tapes and moved to selling computers, etc. When online sales started to rise, he sold the physical store and went into the supply side of the business, running a chain of warehouses. He was very good at seeing trends and not sticking with old business models.

[Ben Staad]

Parents owned a laserdisc player but I think they bought it at the tale end of the LD high. Almost overnight -it seemed- everyone else owned VHS players and nobody local rented LD's. They had to drive to the adjacent town just to rent discs. Think we owned it less than a year before switching to a VCR.

[Ben Staad]

Never heard of renting a TV. I was young but alive in 1980.

My neighbor had the first (and only) Betamax on our street back in 1980. Those were the days when almost everyone rented their TVs, and spending that kind of money on a VCR was unbelievable to us.

[Dave1442397]

What no love for Betamax? Still waiting for Sony to try and bring it back.

My neighbor had the first (and only) Betamax on our street back in 1980. Those were the days when almost everyone rented their TVs, and spending that kind of money on a VCR was unbelievable to us.

[Dave1442397]

If you can find a working player, Laserdiscs have some amazing movies that you cannot find on DVD or Bluray. Unaltered Star Wars! Disney had some SPECTACULAR box sets. All of the old Criterion editions So much for film buffs.Finding the working player is the tricky part. I have two (got one for free a while back - which was good because my original player always sounds like it's going to die when the laser flips.)

I must keep an eye out for one. I see a lot of old AV equipment going for pennies on the dollar on Facebook, etc. The unaltered Star Wars would be fun to have

As for westerns, I got hooked on them back in the late '70s/early '80s. BBC2 used to have late night movies starting around 11:30pm, and they went thru a slew of westerns and Hammer House of Horror flicks. No commercials, of course.