SFXB Forum

hi, i recently bought 4 volumes of starfleet of this guy on ebay. i received them today and iam puzzled. volume 8 which was opened has the original golden classics entertainment sticker on the vhs. the other three vols 5,6,7 were shrinkwrapped and on opening them did not have the golden sticker on but a cheap white label with starfleet vol 5 etc and the name of the volume. the tapes look newer also. are these fakes or just other editions?thanks

My tapes are currently packed away, but I think there is a tendency for them to have both types of labels. Couldn't tell you why - possibly they were different production runs or intended for different markets. Anyone have a definitive answer?

A good friend on mine bought a lot (a dozen or so) of the original Classic Family Entertainment tapes several years ago and not one of them had a white label like that.My guess is that you've got copies of the real tapes. Of course, as with all copies, this means the quality is likely degraded from the original.

That's an interesting theory - so how did these "fakes" get what are apparently original cases? Is it possible someone got hold of some surplus cases and decided to produce some cheap copies? Talk about your tangled web...

do people here in the uk own more gold label ones than the lesser quality ones?

Well, I've just done a test - ironically although I've owned them for ages I've never actually needed to play them.  Lo and behold, only a couple of the open ones are gold stickers and the sealed ones are white - and the white label volume one was actually a volume three!  Plus it does seem a little more washed out compared with the gold label version.  So although the gold label ones are open and ex-rental it seems like they'd be the better bet.  I suppose now I need to find a real volume one... Oh, and my volume 8 was open but white label but printed in a different way to the "volume one". The details on the covers are identical - some sort of cheap second run or something?

Howardform, you're right when you see that this isn't something that's likely to have been bootlegged over in the States and as you say the outer casing is absolutely spot on. Even the look and feel of the cardboard is identical. So how these tapes managed to get into these sleeves and shrink-wrapped is anyone's guess. I suppose it's possible that someone found a whole pile of the original sleeves and made up copies to go in them, but it seems a lot of trouble to go to. And yet the labels do have a "home made" quality about them. I wonder, did Classic Family Entertainment go bust in 1988/1989?