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I am sometimes asked for advice on how to
start building a collection of MST3K episodes beyond the
handful of episodes that were running on Sci-Fi and the few retail
episodes available from Rhino. And I can give
some good advice because I built my complete personal
collection starting from next-to-nothing. So here
is basically how I did it and, hence, how I recommend
others do it as well.
The first step is to acquire at least
a dozen or so episodes from some of the episode sellers
out there (if you don’t know which episodes to buy, a
bit of advice is to get episodes that other traders are
looking for). I personally do not sell dubs, but I
can recommend a few sellers that I’ve had great dealings
with:
- MST3KVideos.com is
one of the easiest to recommend, with very good VHS
and DVD-R dubs delivered quickly in either durable
VHS cases or DVD keepcases. The website,
obviously, is: http://www.mst3kvideos.com
- Access MST3K is
another very good episode seller site that also
sells both VHS and DVD-R dubs. The site is: http://www.mst3ktapes.com
- Bill Rhodes is also a
good and well-recommended VHS and DVD-R episode dub
seller. His website is: http://wcrhodes.home.mindspring.com
- Castle Forrester is a
newer site that I personally haven’t used, but have
heard good thing about. Its address is: http://www.castleforrester.com
And another way to acquire episodes is
via a relatively new development in MST3K episode
trading called the Digital Archiving Project (DAP),
in which episodes are digitally encoded for downloading
and burning onto 700MB CD-R discs (which is accomplished
by using either standard MPEG-4v2 or XviD compression to
fit an entire episode onto a single CD-R disc, hence,
limiting playback to computers). Although it
really requires a high-speed Internet connection to be
worthwhile, this is definitely the cheapest way to build
a complete MST episode collection. Go to this link
to learn more about the project: http://mst3k.dapcentral.org/
(note that reading the FAQ there is essential to
learning how to download!) [Note: a new
development in the DAP is in MST3K DVDs: read
this for more info]
(NOTE that none of the MST
episode sellers or the DAP will distribute any episodes
that Rhino
is selling. For these episode, you must go to an
authorized retailer, such as Amazon.com.)
The following step, after you get a dozen or so episodes
in your MST3K library, is to start to look for traders.
Traders are other people who have some episodes of the
show and will trade VHS dubs of some of their episodes
for VHS dubs of some episodes they don’t have.
This is where you can really build your collection
because all you need is two VCRs, some RCA cables, and
some quality blank videotapes (something that I
recommend buying in bulk). Probably the easiest
way to find other traders is through the Trade Post
at Satellite
News (aka the MST3K Info Club Site): http://www.mst3kinfo.com/trader.html
(How often they update this, though, is tough to say)
And here’s a few links to webpages of current traders
(BTW, having a website of episodes you have and want
really helps in trading a lot, so write me if you would
like for me to add your trading page added to the list
below):
The Usenet MST3K newsgroups can also
be useful to find other traders. The two
newsgroups that stick to MST3K in discussions are alt.fan.mst3k
and alt.tv.mst3k,
while the other major group is rec.arts.mst3k.misc
which tends to be about anything but MST3K.
It’s a good idea to read these for a little while before
posting, but after reading them, you can then post a
short message to one of these groups looking for other
traders. (Be sure to leave a valid e-mail or
website address for someone to contact you.)
And, after trading for a while, you
should start to have a sizable collection. But
then there will be episodes that you can’t find at any
of the traders. That’s when you either return to
the sellers to buy some more episodes or go to the DAP
and fill in the gaps. This
whole process of acquiring all of the episodes takes
time, though – it took me over a year!
Anyway, it’s really not that hard to
do and it’s definitely very rewarding, so good luck
trading!
(Page Last Updated: 16-Nov-2003)
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