Are You Sitting On Thousands In Old Disney VHS Tapes?

A couple of years ago, reports started to emerge that certain Disney 'Black Diamond' Classic VHS tapes were going for hundreds, even thousands of dollars on Ebay, particularly the 'Beauty and the Beast' title. This of course made me rush to the shelves, and imagine my excitement when I discovered that I actually had it!

Apparently these tapes were a short run in the late eighties to early nineties which made them more rare than other runs and had to have the black diamond on the spine (hence the name) along with black labels on the cassettes that had to bear the words 'A Walt Disney Classic' to qualify for the possible windfall of cash.

However, when I took a little gander over to eBay to case the situation, what I found was not what I was told I would find. While there were definitely a few listings of the tapes for hundreds or thousands, NO ONE was actually bidding on them. On the contrary, their were literally HUNDREDS of listings in the $25-50 dollar range which had plenty of bids and no bidding wars in between those and the expensive listings. Even listings for sealed mint-condition tapes (which mine was far from) were very meagerly priced which signaled to me that this had to be a hoax.

Sorry, to be the bearer of bad news, but the only lasting value that you're really going to get out of your Black Diamond tapes is if you pop them in your VCR and watch them =)