Anybody here collect boxing fights anybody record on vhs 80s/90s ?

I wasn't recording & collecting as far back as the 1980's but I used to be pretty adamant about archiving any footage I came across that wasn't already readily available online.

Are you looking for certain fights/fighters in particular?

 

I really wish I had conserved my VHS collection, I had loads of fights that are not on YT.

 

What happened to it?

 

Can't speak for anyone else but I've lost some physical media to water damage/humidity/mold.

 

That's sad. I'm sure there's a lot of people it happened to... Converting VHS is a lot of work and They don't last forever. A lot of great collections and many fights must've been lost.
Life happens - there was one collector in particular, which I often think about - Brian - running a website called classicfights, who suffered from heart attack at very young age, I early 50s if not late 40s. I have no idea what happend to all the fights He gathered and to this day, I never saw some of the stuff He had anywhere else. Did He have anyone around who understood the value of it - for a small communnity of boxing enthusiasts? Or was it thrown away as useless, space-consuming garbage?

I'm in contact with couple collectors currently who are looking to get rid of big VHS/DVD collections, but would like to be compensated... I'd like to help perserve it, but it's difficult to organise it with them living in different countries.
Plus then You need to take care of it - I have tons of DVDs I'm slowly moving to external hard drives... it requires a lot of time.

 

They make DVD's that are archival quality and will last several decades... I have almost 400 burned discs... think I used the brand Verbatim which is known for it's quality. Pricier then normal DVD's but worth it. External hard drives and a dock is another way to store and quickly go through digitized footage.

I was in contact with someone with a massive collection of obscure physical media but haven't heard from them in some time and don't know what will come of it. Like you said, this kind of stuff being seen as nothing but space stealing garbage is heart breaking.

 

They stood still in a place and probably are rotten.. I would imagine, we are talking about 20 years ago... I have no VHS device anymore so I am guessing... maybe they aren´t though. Who knows ?
Gonna check it someday... I have some real interesting gems even if most never heard about some of the boxers... Anderson Pantera Clayton fights, for example...
https://boxrec.com/en/box-pro/233995

 

I think You should give it a try. I know some people who were able to recover some old and damaged VHS - there's software that helps with it. Where I live there are people You can pay for to transfer VHS to DVD for You as well.
Quality is not great a lot of times, if the tapes have not been stored properly - if You watch old fights on Youtube, there's some stuff there that clearly went through this kind of recovery process... but it's still watchable and it's much better than nothing!

 

I've seen some people actually complain that the quality of some of these obscure fights that barely exist isn't "adequate". Incredibly short sighted and ungrateful.

 

The explosion of fights on YT basically killed the independent sellers' businesses. Unfortunately, there are still rare fights that have yet to make their way to YT & may never see the light of day now that the old sellers have disappeared/retired/passed away.

 

My father still has his large VHS collection in boxes in his garage. He meticulously recorded everything in that era, labeling every VHS with all the fight that were on it. I remember my mother getting real mad at him (I was young but she was mad enough that I specifically remember this) for buying some expensive early VHS that would let him set timers so he didn't have to miss anything. He also used to trade/copy tapes with some local group he'd met.

Some day, I should go through it all, see if there's anything rare in there.

 

Pretty soon, there will be easy AI algorithms that you feed a potato quality video file into and that spit out something in its original glory. This stuff is more important than ever to save digitally because of how soon it'll be fully restorable.

 

I bought my first vhs tape recorder in 1988 to record the Greg Haugen v Gert Bo Jacobsen fight. Then I recorded and traded all over the world. It cost a lot to send tapes by air mail. When my collection reached 600 tapes, I bought a very expensive Philips dvd recorder and started to convert the tapes to dvd, it took two years working almost round the clock. The dvd recorder broke down every three months and had to be repaired (varranty). After two years I had finished the job and Philips gave me my money back as they could not repair it any more, and the model was out of production.
I still have my collection, now more than 4000 dvds.
I still have a VHS recorder, but honestly I dont know if it works any more.

 

I have a pretty big vhs collection of over 1,000 tapes. PM me if there is something in particular you are seeking.