Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas – Coming Out of the Disney Vault!

Disney is re-releasing Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas as a special 2 Disk Collector’s Edition DVD as well as in the high definition Blu-ray format on August 28th of this year (2008)! As of approximately 9:30 AM CST today, the new Blu-ray edition already has 2 members waiting on its wish list at SwapaDVD. Only one of these wishes resides in the top 5 and none in the #1 position. The new 2 Disk Collector’s Edition DVD on only has one member currently on the wish list and that member only has it ranked at #12. This is a prime opportunity for those at the back of the old line to jump ahead of everyone else for a copy of the newest Disney versions! Pre-orders for both titles are available at Amazon with a 30% discount.

Disney has announced that there will also be a special 3D version of the film released in select theaters for a limited period (beginning October 19th, 2008). You can view the announcement from Disney here. Lastly, there will be an ultra-special Ultimate Collector’s Edition DVD that will feature a hand-painted and numbered bust of Jack Skellington with his Sandy Claws hat and a sound chip that plays quotes from the movie. Amazon’s catalog indicates that there are 3 disks in this set where the regular collector’s edition only has 2 mentioned so there’s evidently a bit more to this super pricey option than just the limited edition artwork! This little goody will retail at nearly $180 a pop but also may be pre-ordered for 30% off at Amazon with a release date of August 28th. With 124 people wishing for the out of print Special Edition and approximately 100 wishes for the other previously released versions (though many are likely duplications from the same lists) there’s no doubt that many SwapaDVD members could benefit from this expulsion from Disney’s vault!

(Just because I like to track this sort of thing, Amazon’s current sales ranks are 3,311 for the 2 disk DVD version – 1,702 for the Blu-ray edition – and 1,914 for the Ultimate Collector’s Edition.)

Should it Stay, or Should it Go (Now)? a ramble…

Trying to decide what to do with the many DVDs in my possession has resulted in an odd dilemma. What do I do with all of them once I’ve watched them? Of course, everyone has “keepers” that they would never get rid of. It’s not the obvious keepers that are causing me pause – it’s the ones that fall into the gray zones between “I’ll watch it again” and “it’s just gonna sit there and collect dust but I might want to watch it again someday” that I’m talking about. This issue seems to come up a lot (see my recent dilemma over what to do with my copy of The Tudors) and it even affects simple things like managing what little space I have available to house all of my accumulated treasures! The answer is to swap them at SwapaDVD, but the question of when and which ones to swap remains the same.

I think I’ve decided to keep the items that I can’t readily replace – even if there’s little possibility that I’ll watch them again any time soon. While I’ve been very lucky to pick up a number of out of print DVDs at SwapaDVD, I don’t kid myself that lightening would strike twice and that I’d be able to get the same titles again very readily. First, because there are other collectors who have the same titles on their wish lists and I’ll be forced to wait in line to get a replacement (that’s fair). Second, because these titles are out of print, they often command stupid-expensive pricing on the secondary used market (as a buyer I call the high prices stupid, if I were the seller I’d call it fair market value)!

I watch a lot of non-fiction. Documentaries, biographies, performance art, you name it – I watch it. A lot of this sort of thing is only produced in small numbers – it’s never expected to appeal to the masses so their production runs tend to be quite small. Some houses, such as A&E/History Channel only issues certain titles based on demand. This is literally a print-on-demand scenario where they will tell you up front that your order will take longer to fill because they physically have to manufacture the DVD to fill your order. If you were to go their website, a great many of their titles are noted this way. Of course, you’re usually forced to pay the full price of $25 for these titles, unless they decide to run a special and produce a bunch of them in advance. They did this recently with their Modern Marvels series and offered them as a BOGO free deal.