Carolyn J. Braden • 3 Minute Read
Rare Thrift Store Finds: Why We Like LaserDisc Movies
Ahh, the LaserDisc and the LaserDisc player. My husband brought home a player he found at a pawn shop many, many years ago and the obsession began. We’ve collected LaserDiscs like the entire Star Wars Trilogy, Die Hard, Death Becomes Her, Top Gun and more. We even have two LaserDisc players.
My husband, Tommy and a LaserDisc
After my husband found his first LaserDisc player, he did a lot of research on them. You can find the history and more via the LaserDisc Wikipedia page here. We will highlight some of our knowledge about LaserDiscs, their players and why we like them in this article.
We call it a RARE thrift store find because you really don’t see them hardly at all at many thrift stores. We think people are buying them up for themselves and to sell on eBay. They really aren’t worth much (no, you won’t become a millionaire selling old LaserDiscs), but they may be worth adding to your home collection and here’s why.
We do LaserDisc marathons sometimes
My husband made a 3-ish minute video about his LaserDisc collection and the history of LaserDiscs for our YouTube channel. Watch it below or via our channel @carolynjbraden by clicking here.
We explain in the video that they are record-sized CD looking discs that were first on the market in Atlanta, Georgia in 1978. They were fairly expensive at the time. You couldn’t record on them so between that and the cost, they weren’t as popular as VHS tapes or other recording formats.
The actual recording technology was invented by David Paul Gregg and James Russell in 1963 and Pioneer Electronics later bought the majority stake in the format, creating the players and the marketing, calling it LaserVision and LaserDisc. The players are rather large and bulky, but later versions also allowed people to play DVD’s and some CD’s when that technology was released.
Die Hard is a great classic movie to watch on LaserDisc
Tommy, my husband, loves the sound quality on LaserDiscs, as the sound is especially great. The picture though, isn’t quite as good as modern technology, but sometimes that’s okay. Especially when we are doing a LaserDisc marathon with some of our classic movie titles like one of his favorites, Die Hard.
He loves Star Wars
Many people buy LaserDiscs and the Star Wars trilogy as the original cut of the movie is on LaserDisc. When we watch some of our longer movie titles, we have to either flip the disc ourselves (when it tells us to) or one of our two players will do it for us automatically.
We have a remote for one of our two LaserDisc players, but it works on both
We have a remote for one of our players, though it’s not necessary. The players have all the buttons you need to play it. When we hook it up to our smart TV (we currently have a Roku TCL smart TV), we use composite audio video RCA cables. Our LG TV has issues playing the LaserDisc only after we press pause. There’s some finagling we have to do if we pause using that TV, but our Roku TCL has no issues.
The sound is great on LaserDiscs
If you ever want to “nerd-out” in the technology zone and find a LaserDisc and a player that is in your affordability range, they are worth having around, especially if you love great movie sound quality. There’s Reddit threads about them too. We store them with our records in a crate-like stand and our vinyl record storage case, as they are the same size. They do not make LaserDiscs anymore. The last title released in North America was Bringing Out the Dead on October 3, 2000. Japan kept them going for another year, as they were very popular there.
Some albums have some great art on them too. One day we’ll store them alongside Tommy’s collection of real movie posters he’s held onto for many years. It’s a perfect “man-cave” theme that we’ll incorporate into our next house.
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Carolyn J. (C.J.) Braden is the owner of Carolyn’s Blooming Creations is a regular contributor and editor for CBC. She has been featured in numerous media publications such as InStyle Magazine, on HGTV, on Bustle.com, and more. She is the author of the books Georgia McMasters in Amethyst Lake Cemetery, How To Be Yourself: 3 Ways To Help You Being You, and the illustrator for the children’s book Bridging Connections. She is a former classroom teacher that now dedicates her life to educating others on how to live their most healthy, creative and happy life. Learn more about her visiting our About Us page.