For Sale: This Massive, Obsessive and (Probably) Obsolete VHS Boxing Archive

I want this collection so badly. Willing to max out credit cards, skip buying a house, & divorcing the wife so I have enough time before I die to watch every tape. What a great story and collection.

Its a shame a collection like this is not worth a fortune. YouTube is good and bad. The problem is YouTube does not care about copyright protection unless its their own movie/show. You can find complete sporting events on YouTube which are copyright protected. You can find complete movies and TV shows which are also copyright protected. YouTube seems to be above copyright protection. But if someone puts up one of their Karate Kid shows, they flag it and take it down?

There are many ways to read this story, but for me, it is primarily a story of love and respect.

I suggest she shift her energy to listing these on eBay. For $2.99 per video plus shipping, a number will likely sell and she’ll get the satisfaction of knowing they are going to someone who will value them. Spending the money will be a bonus.

This is an incredibly New York story. As a boxing fan, the contents of his collection are invaluable. There is much to learn from.

How about contacting the Library of Congress and donating it? It's not about the money; it's about the labor of love that was Bela's legacy.

One person’s gold is another’s trash. Incredibly selfish of this now deceased man sticking his widow with this burden. He should have dealt with it before his death.

The best ending for this collection would be its donation or relatively low value sale to an institution that would digitize it and preserve it. That is the payment to be received at this point. It was already transitioned from VCR to DVD, but DVD is over now also. This is the only way to honor the legacy and at the same time move on from it. There is a message here for everyone, however, especially collectors (of anything) but everyone. The collector needs to think about moving on from his/her solipsistic pleasure in collecting to consideration for his family afterwards. This is relevant to all of our stuff, not just formal collections.

I wonder if she approached The International BoxIng Hall of Fame Canastota, NY.? Seems like a natural fit for this place which could then set up a few small screen viewing booths for visitors.

Ms. Szilagyi, I would recommend you reach out to the Internet Archive about this collection. They digitize and make available all media and keep their physical copy in storage for the future. Recently, they have gotten a new place in Richmond CA to house a multitude of books and video tapes. https://archive.org/ I can put you in touch with the lead archivist if you think it could be a good fit.

great story. I was a pro boxer in 1957 in Miami Beach, Angelo Dundee was my manager. It is so great that these films are still around. Years ago on TV they had a show called "greatest fights of the century." i think it was on wkly. maybe some tv company would want to put these fights on. if I lived in New York I know where I would be spending my Sunday. thank you for saving these fights. Mike Shapiro

This highly emotional piece is something that is sorely missing in New York City journalism today. Sure, it’s a piece about a video collection, but it is so much more. It’s a piece about a man’s love for a sport and a couple’s love and dedication to each other. I was late reading the paper this morning, but this article was brought to my attention by a good friend who got to it first. We both recognize a great, well-written story when we read one. We both worked at the Daily News when it was capable of the same type of journalism. Sadly, it’s now as dead as VHS

Virtually every country in the world trains boxers for the Olympics. Someone somewhere has a poor internet connection and would value an offline collection on VHS and DVD, no matter the format. Our assumption that YouTube/internet access is universally cheap and unlimited ignores global reality.

Thanks for sharing this fascinating story about love, devotion, video archives and ever-accelerating technological obsolescence. I have two reactions as follows: 1. Perhaps the Library of Congress would accept this collection as a donation - and then spend the money to get all these old VHS tapes digitized. It may sound a bit extravagant now, but every decade that goes by makes these tapes more and more valuable to archivists studying mid-20th Century Americana. 2. As a prolific collector of VHS tapes myself (don't ask how many, please) - for the last 15 years I've been snapping up old VHS recorders at thrift stores. Until about five years ago, I paid five bucks or less for each one. But in the last few years the availability of old VHS machines has almost completely dried up. The few that occasionally pop up now are priced much higher. I predict that a decade from now, a vintage VHS recorder in good working condition will be worth $100 or more. Fortunately, my collection of working VHS players now numbers in the dozens. I've even given away more than a few of them to family and friends who've discovered their old VHS tapes in some closet or attic and now want to watch them - a decade or more after they tossed out their last VHS machine. Yes, DVDs have infinitely better picture quality. But there are hundreds of millions of VHS tapes out there with rare or unique content recorded on them (particularly "home movies"). Without a working VHS player - they're utterly useless.

so much nostalgia in this story. it made me think of the Radiohead song “Videotape”. i hope someone out there has an interest in the collection. it’s really cool.

So poignant is the passage of time, the burden of memory, and the fear of letting go. This piece made me cry.

A few years ago the Wall Street Journal had a sad story about the problems of aging people who have collected things all of their lives and can't find anyone willing to take them. Once, collecting was more popular. People collected stamps, coins, books, magazines, ashtrays, dolls, lamps, back-scratchers, rocks, butterflies, and all the artifacts of modern life. A younger generation has mostly lost interest. Manhattan apartments run out of room. Sadly, there is no foundation interested in setting up a museum for your shoelace collection in a lower-rent location. One man had a pencil collection, and was trying to find someone to preserve them for posterity. An appraiser gave him the bad news: Glue them together, make a coffin, and bury yourself in it.

That millions of artist’s music was “lost” recently cloud or server storage is hardly secure. DVDs break down remarkably fast, I loaned one to a friend and it was unplayable as the aluminum was corroded. Video tape also breaks down in a few decades. A museum should take possession of these tapes and transfer them to digital format that will be continually updated and curated as technology changes. I feel for Bela, this collection must feel like a milestone hanging from her neck.

As someone who collects international soccer matches, this story resonates with me. In the past, I have been contacted by TV networks and football associations to get games they needed but now a lot of those companies seem to better organized with their own archives. I've never been interested in selling or renting games; trading with people around the world has always been far more interesting to me because of the social interaction that happens via on-going exchanges. With all of that said, given my experiences with football DVDs and HD files, a collection like this is never going to be sold off. Most people are interested in something specific that they can't find elsewhere. For example, I am always trying to find new (old) Libertadores matches from South America or Africa Cup of Nations matches. I assume in the boxing world, the local small fights will be most attractive to people, but they are only going to want to purchase a few of those videos (not the whole collection). BTW, there is currently a piece up on the Village Voice site about Kim's Underground Video VHS tapes and DVDs that seems to relate to this story about the boxing collection. It's worth a read for anyone interested in obscure media collections.

“Before he died, he told me: ‘The collection is going on forever. It has to go on,’” To guilt your spouse in to adopting a time-consuming and obsessive hobby is beyond unfair, and a little cruel. She wondered, "Is this what my marriage is going to look like for the rest of my life?” only to have her husband ask that she maintain it once death had done them part. This is a heartbreaking article in more ways than one.

A "sport" where one person wins if they manage to inflict a severe concussion on the other. Ranks right up there with the "sport" of catch-and-release fishing, where you torture a fish to the surface on a metal hook, pull them into an atmosphere where they begin to suffocate, rip out the hook and release them, as much as to say "just kidding!" Do you think if the "sport" were running down a deer with dogs or motorcycles, dragging them kicking to a pond, thrusting their head underwater until they half drown, then letting them go that it would be socially acceptable? Why does "sport" require imposing pain and violence? At least in football, as bad as it is, the goal is moving a ball and the pain is a side consequence, not the point of the whole endeavor.

I am a huge fan of boxing. My dad used to take me out of school and we would go to the local theater to see the filmed fights from Madison Sq Garden and other venues. If I were younger, I would offer to take the archives. But, alas, as Ms. Szilagyi notes, Tempis Fugit.

As someone who owns a film archive, I see all the problems. The Boxing Hall of Fame should buy this collection and preserve it. The collection is not worth much in dollar terms but it's great to have all this history in on place and not scattered over the internet. I recently appraised a tennis film collection and a similar single buyer emerged. It would be a shame to see all this effort go to waste.

I see two problems. 1) The overhead from digitizing the collection is a serious project in both time and money. Maybe a university who already has the necessary equipment and resources. However, you'd have to find someone who would prioritize this project over so many other choices. Peter Jackson's "They Will Not Grow Old" was essentially a philanthropic salvage mission. There wasn't much WWI footage in the first place and the quality has deteriorated with time. Most universities will prioritize this sort of project over sporting events. 2) Most television, particularly broadcast, is already archived somewhere. The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is one name that comes to mind. The main advantage of a private collection is you don't have to work hard to find what you need. Things are thematically organized and easily accessible. This is the true value you're selling. Television, unlike many films, is usually sitting around in a box somewhere. You sometimes need to work really hard to find it though.

Put it all on DVD formats; but it's worth a fortune, because one way or another, boxing has its ups and downs, but from Ancient Greece until now, it remains the king of sports & sport competition; and presently is in another resurgence mode.

Ironic that this collection will ultimately be forgotten, like the memories in the head of an aging boxer.

Their love story is worthy of a movie and the rights may well be worth more than the collection.

Some years ago, I purchased a $7 DVD about the Manhattan Project. Later, I gave it to my uncle. Recently, I wanted to give it to a friend, and went on line to buy another copy. It was now 25 or 35 bucks. Indignant, I checked foreign markets, but no luck. Give up? Suddenly the magic word VHS occurred to me. I got the film for $4. And it is serviceable. So, count one vote for VHS preservation.

Given the shelf life of VHS tapes—30-65 years, depending on wear and moisture, with degradation after just 10—any individual or organization would need to embark on a lengthy and expensive digitization project for them to be usable in the longer term. The early tapes are already 50 years old. Assuming a negotiated bulk rate price of $5 per tape for digital conversion and transcription of notes, that's a $40,000 outlay. John Miley had a similar issue with his collection of baseball games, but those were recorded before 1972 and not subject to copyright. As a result, the Library of Congress was able to acquire select games for preservation and he is able to sell them online. My understanding is that live sports broadcasts were granted automatic copyright from 1976 on, however, so while the tapes themselves could be sold, the content itself couldn't be distributed online or exhibited publicly. All of this surely complicates efforts to sell by Mrs. Szilagyi. Copyright, originally lasting no more than 28 years, now apparently lasts nearly a century for these kinds of works, ensuring that the public domain is increasingly irrelevant. It may now also result in this historic archive being lost to the public good forever.

A very beautiful and poignant story. The fact that one spouse’s work is carried on by the surviving spouse is both tender and wistful. Tender in that it attests to the love they had for each other and that they shared a passion for boxing and archiving it’s history. (And they also shared a passion for the piano and the performance of music.) Two very different interests to be sure and it is marvelous that they were able to share them as part of a relationship that lasted a half century. (I bet they shared other passions, too, that made their relationship even more loving, rewarding and unique.). There is also the wistfulness of the surviving spouse’s continued addition to and maintenance of the physical manifestation of their passion for boxing while she tries to find someone to whom she can pass the mantel of maintaining the collection and knowing it has a good home. And, again, the tenderness she feels for her husband is wrapped into that wistfulness. I hope she finds someone to whom she can pass the torch and who will appreciate all that went into creating the archive and to continue to maintain it and give it the care and attention it deserves. When that happens, I hope she (and her husband) will be at peace knowing that there is someone who is carrying on their passion. It brings a smile to my face just to hope that will occur.

Believe it or not, I share her pain. My 1st husband collected the history of boxing in print form. I have in storage a couple hundred binders filled with newspaper clippings and typed accounts from microfiche and photos of boxing from 1880 to the 1930's. I've put a few postings up on a FB page The Phillips Collection of Boxing History. It's history no one wants.

Amazing collection. The trick to viewing VHS tapes is to watch them on a small HDTV via the video inputs. My tapes, even those recorded at the 6-hour speed look great on my 19" HDTV but only fair on my 29" HDTV. The biggest problem is that AFAIK no one in the world manufactures VCRs anymore, even the VHS-DVD combo units have disappeared.