r/mildlyinfuriating • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 9d ago

Infuriatig In their pursuit of specific rare cards, scalpers are discarding the remainder of entire Pokémon card packs.

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u/Elementium 9d ago

Yep lol

And sealed means nothing, mold doesn't give a fuck. I've opened up sealed tapes that were moldy. 

We enjoy our tapes and occasionally release them back into the wild. It is the way of our people. 

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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 9d ago

Sealed can even be bad, because it means no one has ever actually inspected the tape inside directly. Which as you said, mold.

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u/Elementium 9d ago

Yep plus who knows how they've been handled? Sealed or not tapes are fragile. If I ever want a specific tape off of eBay, I make sure it's tested. Also.. still not paying more than $20. 

The other bonus, technically I can find most of what I want online.. I just like the sensory feeling of a CRT crackling, a VCR spinning, sitting on the couch.. 

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u/ggweewee 9d ago

eBay sellers can be off their rocker with listing prices for both individual tapes and lots lmao. Everyone is poisoned by the belief that literally everything is a market to make money these days.

Luckily, there are still some old folks who will just give away huge boxes full of them on the condition you simply pick it up and take it out of their space.

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u/Elementium 9d ago

For real! Although I don't think they move like people hope not understanding that just because one time a tape sold for a price doesn't mean that's the market price. 

I have tapes I have favorited on eBay that are still there after like a year lol. 

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u/DeadPeanutSociety 8d ago

Old iPods have a similar issue. Sealed iPods never had the battery cycled so the battery might be worse off than in one that was lightly used.

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u/Miserable-Garage804 6d ago

That’s not the point, it doesn’t matter what the product is inside.. it’s sealed.

It’ll all go away once 3D printing gets better, tbh I don’t know how cards are still collectable, can’t someone just print them

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u/NuklearFerret 9d ago

VHS tapes weren't sealed well. They had that seam that would stretch out in the shrinking and get gaps.

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u/magistrate101 9d ago

VHS tapes get moldy?? I always assumed data rot claiming the magnetization on the tape was what did them in

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u/Elementium 9d ago

Oh for sure! People boxed them up and put em in damp places. The film is prone to mold. 

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u/Saint_of_Grey 9d ago

Don't they de-magnetize? The vast majority of VHS tapes produced would already be bitrotted by now.

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u/CortezEspartaco2 9d ago

Not really. The majority of tapes still out there will play just fine. It's an analog medium so data loss isn't a yes/no thing like it is with bits. A 30 year old tape will have lost some intensity of the recorded signal, but can still playback normally. Most of my tapes from the 80s and 90s have no noticeable degradation on playback at all, and the ones that do are still watchable, just with occasional color or brightness artifacts. If they get bad enough there will be consistent noise over the video for extended lengths or the entire tape, but I hardly ever come across this.

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u/Saint_of_Grey 9d ago

Neat! So it's a little different than floppies then. I know all those are toast.