I'll try to keep this short, but you know me, it probably won't be... but I'll do my best.
It all started when I was going back through my stupid movie posts and trying to figure out when I purchased certain sets. At some point I got to me purchasing the John Wayne Tribute collection. In that post I mentioned that this set made up something like 85% of the John Wayne and the Western Trios 50 pack and that this set had three movies that the Tribute set did not. ... And that bugged me and my little completeist brain. So, I went a seaching and found that I could probably get this set for $6 bucks. Now if I was sticking to my 'no more than $1 per movie', this would have failed, but I was all 'But I really want those three'... so I bought it.
It arrived from the place that I bought it from... and it was missing one of the discs, but like I said I had everything in this set with the exception of three movies and I had that disc so I sent an email and it went unanswered but I figured that I didn't want to deal with the return process so I said 'Whatever.'
And as I do when I get a new set, I create a checklist for the movie pack and do all my research. One of the movies was 'The Hurricane Express', however it was then I realized that this was actually a movie version of a serial of the same name. And of course I wondered 'is that out there to purchase'. And sure enough, it was (with another serial I had and another I didn't) and interestingly from the same company I had just bought from. And this is where I went a bit sideways and mental.
I noticed that on the listing for 'John Wayne - The Early Years' that the seller had a 'Buy 2, Get 1 Free' promotion. So my dumb brain was all 'I could make this technically cost less if I bought two more things'. The Early Years was going to be $5. So I started looking through all their listings. I found a couple of things, but they were both $3.50 (10 Adventure Movies and 8 Alaska Adventures). So somehow in my head I decided that I wanted those two other sets, but that I didn't want to pay $5 for one, $3.50 for another only to get a $3.50 item for free. So then I found another item which was a little over $4 (Fantasy 6 Movie collection). So now I had three that were around the same price, but I still wanted the John Wayne set which was $5. So I found a couple more sets more in the $5.50 range (15 Action Movies and 20 Movie Western Pack), and with that I could get the John Wayne Early Years set for free. So now I was out $8 for the $3.50 trio and $12 for the $5 trio. I watched carefully over the next day and saw that they were shipped.
Somehow my brain started wondering what other serials were out there and since I do homework well, I found quite a few. I also realized that I had some in other sets that I had (like the 150 Sci Fi TV Episodes page). After combing eBay for what was out there, I finally tripped over a TreeLine pack called Classic Serials that I had no idea existed. It contained quite a few of the ones that I knew were in circulation with the exception of Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe. It also contained the three John Wayne serials I had just put in an order for, which was a bit infuriating. But whatever, I purchased it for $7.25.
At the same time, I knew that the Half Price Books Warehouse sale was going to be that weekend. So I took off work on Friday (Aug 11th 2023) and I dragged Maryann with me. My main goal was to find more movie packs which I figured wouldn't be a problem and I was hoping to find the Flash Gordon serial though there was no guarantee at all for that. So we got there and I went straight to where the DVDs were. They were all priced at $2 or less. And I started my scouring of all the DVDs. And amazingly enough, within the first two rows (out of like 30ish), I actually found a good copy of Flash Gordon. I should have just stopped there but of course I wanted to see what else there was, so I kept combing the thousands of DVD that were there. I'll make this part short and say I also picked up the following: 8 Movie Action Pack, 14 movies based on the books of Mary Higgins Clark (still sealed), 16 movie Western Value Collection (which looked like it had a fair number of movies as the 20 movie collection I had purchased earlier on eBay, but I took a gamble, Denzel Washington Vol. 2 5 Movie Collection, and The Great Commandments 20 Features (still sealed). Other non-movie pack DVDs I got were: G3 Live in Concert (Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai), the original Star Wars trilogy on Blu-Ray, Thor Ragnarock on Blu-Ray, Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, and Volume 1 of Animaniacs (which I though I had... and maybe I did, but I probably got rid of it, but not I have it again). I also perused the LPs which were 50 cents each and got the following: A batter copy of the Woodstock 3-LP soundtrack to replace the one which got destroyed when my sister's basement flooded, Weather Report - Sweetnighter (Ben Folds had mentioned them in a song once), the original Blood, Sweat & Tears album, a Christmas album called 'The Little Drummer Boy' on Diplomat label which Maryann had pointed out that her family had way back when, Elvis - Pure Gold, K-tel's Music Magic, and three albums from Stan Kenton (a big band leader... and two were still sealed). I spent a total of $30 bucks there.
On the way home I got a delivery noticed that all of my eBay purchases had arrived. I got home and immediately took my bounty downstairs. I opened up the small bag which was the Serials box set. It was in decent condition except that some yahoo had torn the side of the box because they didn't realize that you opened the top which was velcro'd on. I checked and all discs were there. I then opened up the big bag which contained the other two orders (ie, they realized the two orders were going to the same place and consolidated. I noticed that I had cases for all six items. It was also then I realized that something seemed off. I looked at the 8 Alaska and realize that yes, I had a DVD for Alaska but it only contained 4 movies. Obviously there was another disc that should have been there, but it wasn't. The same thing happened to my 20 Westerns and 15 Action movies. Long story short, I ended up having to return those three sets since they didn't ship everything...
...Which was just as well. I was already felt extremely ashamed, regretful, annoyed, other bad feelings with my recent purchases. I really had no need for all this crap, some of which I only remotely wanted in the first place. Plus we have been trying to save for a big spring break vacation next year and this certainly wasn't helping.
So... anyhoo. I stupidly bought more stupid movies. And that is all I have to say about that. They will eventually show up in the Stupid Movie Collection post as well as on the Darrin's Movie Collection blog.
Will I stop purchasing things? Probably not. That's not what collectors do. However, I will try to be a little more choosy. For reals this time, I have set all movie pack search results from ebay to NOT email me (I only have a couple music searches that I still have sent to me). So, if I happen to be a Half Price maybe I'll look in the clearance section, and maybe I'll look at the Dollar Tree since occasionally the ones around us have DVDs though they are usually never the movie multi-packs.
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