VCRs: Save or scrap?

[sawing14s]

I’ve been trying my luck with free VCRs from Goodwill and/or Freecycle, but it hasn’t been very good. I’m curious whether I should save (as in, have refurbished and either keep or sell), or scrap them (drop off at e-waste).

* Goldstar (mono)
I already know the answer to this one: scrap. I insert one tape and it displays an error message, refusing to eject even after a power cycle. I had to unscrew it like crazy until I finally got the tape out. That POS VCR is going to the e-waste.
* Philips Magnavox VRX262AT22
Brought it home, all it does is chew up tapes. Save or scrap?
* Panasonic PV-8661
Doesn’t even power on. Save or scrap?

Finally, I have a non-working Samsung SV-5000W. This one has seen better days since I bought it in 2002. Nowadays it won’t even play a tape; it just ejects with any button I press. It doesn’t even power on unless I insert a tape. I have a refurbished replacement deck (same make and model), but after ruining 2-3 different decks with customers’ old dirtier tapes, I don’t want to make the same mistake again - I want something more consumer grade that can handle them. But with this old one: Save or scrap?

[lordsmurf]

Save the Samsung, have fun with the others.

Save one for a day when you want to throw something (and video it for us!).

You have no idea how cathartic it is to throw a VCR out the 3rd story window of a house. I do.

[hodgey]

It really depends on whether you are thinking of fixing them yourself and how much effort you are willing to put in. If you are not fixing yourself it will be some tradeoff between what the vcr is worth (both monetary and sentimental) and what the repair cost would be as unless it's an expensive/fancy model the cost to get it repaired will often be notably more than an equivalent used and working deck.

Those 90s Philips magnavox decks are cheaply made funai jank though it might be that cleaning the mode switch is all that is required to get it working again which is something that is pretty easy to do. Not sure if I would trust one to use on any customer tape though. Not really worth spending money to have someone else fix it as you could probably get the same model or even a better one for next to nothing.

Not powering might be power supply capacitors going bad, or more extensive damage to the power supply section. It's a nicer model than the philips/magnavox, made in japan and does support Hi-Fi audio. I don't know the US panasonic consumer decks (most of them like this one are very different to the european market ones) particularly well so don't know how it is in practice though. If the PQ on them is okay it could be an option for tapes that look too dodgy for the good vcrs. So here really depends on what extent you can handle repair tasks yourself.

The Samsung is worth keeping just for the parts alone, those are quite valuable as they are proper full multi-system VCRs (even with proper SECAM support which is pretty rare to locate in the US). Even parts machines go for a fair bit. Even if you are unable to fix it or get it serviced, parts of it can be used to service working ones.

Besides the value of the VCR on it's own, some simpler vcrs can be worth keeping for parts for fancier models that share parts with them (e.g a samsung from around 1999-2001 will share most of the mechanism bits with the 5000W) even if the deck on it's own isn't anything special.