More TOTP on e-bay

[Christopher Perry]

As far as I am aware there is no great behind the scenes frenzy of acitivity, though coincidentally Laurence and I will be sharing a drink on Saturday at BAFTA. ;D

Part of the problem here is that so many message boards are buzzing and talking up the importance of these tapes, that it is creating an atmosphere of high excitement. The picture quality of CV2000 and Shibaden recordings can vary from diabolical to barely-watchable. Occasionally something half decent is created but it takes lots of restoration.

It's all very well for a collector to buy these tapes but unless they can play them back and copy them, they are just a pile of junk.

In auctions, high excitement is the last thing that you want because people bid higher than they plan to.

The other thing you never do in auctions is tell people beforehand how much your top bid is. Otherwise, they make plans to outbid you.

So why should Laurence or I come on here and tell you all how much or how little money we have? In that sense things are remaining private. :-) But there is no sinister purpose, just sensible bidding.

I keep reminding people that the simple reality is that these may be blanks or recorded over with other programmes. The labels suggest multiple recordings over recordings. These were works in progress with the guy picking out the best bits he liked. Until we have these tapes and they are analysed I wouldn't get excited over any of them.

Rest assured, we will do our best.

c

[LanceM]

Wish you chaps at Kaleidoscope group the very best in obtaining these tapes, fingers crossed. However it baffles me as to why you chaps would not accept financial assistance from members here for this latest project, as I would think that in helping to obtain and possibly preserve this unique material would be a point of major importance ( if they do indeed contain what is labeled to be on them) and would welcome donations from people to help to obtain this lot of items. It cannot be said that people did not want to step up to the plate and assist you chaps in reliving some of the financial burden,hope you chaps will consider this financial assistance. Many thanks to all who have opted to financially assist, it is motions like these which see results, to those willing to take such strides are to be commended. Best of Luck, and good work to all those involved in this endeavor.

Cheers, Lance.

[Paul Rumbol]

thanks Lance, we can only but offer.

Chris if you are successful i hope Kal will allow me access to the Cliff Richard material I have been so keenly searching for all these years. In exchange I have some other lost material to give to you, including about 15 minutes of colour footage from another lost BBC Cliff show - this time from the 1970 season (21st March 1970).
Perhaps if others like myself pledge you some missing clips instead of money - that would surely be more managable in practice.

[Matthew North]

I have a Sony CV2100 if you guys need to use one for transfer, though I suspect the beeb have a few kicking about.

Matthew

[ColinYoung1963]

Matthew,
just out of interest, what year does it say on the metal plate, mine says 1967 and its a CV2100 too and i was under the impression they came out later.

regards

Col

[Barry Edwards]

What seems a shame about the current situation is the way a complete collection will be sold off,maybe never to be seen again.Surely a better solution is to get hold of the reels on a loan basis for a certain amount of money.Having succesfully transfered the material on to disc a furthur payment could then be made to the guy as well as the return of the original reels. He would then be free to sell them off to the highest bidder and we'd all be happy because the precious footage would be secured onto DVD. I've had a lot of experience with collectors who simply want to own something 'unique'. Something that no one else anywhere has got.A collection like this has something for many different fans of many different types of music and needs to be availabe(even at a cost)to all.

[Paul Rumbol]

I made this very point 4 days ago roualt. There doesnt seem to be any initiative to do anything along these lines. The window of opportunity closes in 4 days and the likelihood is that we will never ever see or hear about these gems again.
Unfortunately this is listed as a private auction - so we will never know the identity of the winning bidder either.

[Paul Rumbol]

I think our seller is wobbling a bit under the pressure. Alarmingly at midnight he put the following message up-
"Just to let you know that i will be ending this auction soon because representatives of the BBC are giving me stress because i refused to end the auction and sell them this listing cheaply.Thank you all for your support and take care."

Then just 45 minutes later he posted this:
"Please ignore my last statement.I am going to ponder over this issue but for now all is normal and going ahead ,thank you"

Cant someone from Kal quickly intervene here. Im sure you could get him to remove the listing because of threats of litigation and clinch a deal at the same time.

[ColinYoung1963]

he is actually selling them as blanks, and only suggests what MIGHT be on them, if he is reading this forum and sees your last post , im sure he might just clam up all together.

Col

[ColinYoung1963]

ah and one more thing, when did reps from the BBC start offering money?

Col

[Barry Edwards]

Yes,the whole thing is turning into a bit of a farce.Surely it would be doing the seller a favour if one of us did 'borrow' the tapes just to get them professionally transfered to DVD.The tapes would be returned to him with the knowledge of what is actually on them. If they are genuine he could go on to 'make a killing' from a private collector free of any guilt that he selling a load of duds.

[Kev Mulrenan]

It really needs a professional group like Kal to supervise their transfer.

I've got some old betamax tapes and they are tempermental, so god knows what these even older ones will be like.

I get the impression this one will be pulled.

There's perfectly good episodes of the pops that we'll never see so which is worse? Having wiped tapes or denying access to ones that have survived?

If the beeb get them, what are the chances of minions like us ever seeing them?

[mark901]

Hi, long-time reader of these forums (I check back at least every other month!) but i've not joined before as I have never had anything of interest to post. Have joined today because perhaps I can *help* a bit here...

There's one thing that hasn't been mentioned here- ebay policy. In order to sell videotapes/minidiscs/hard drives/other recordable media with content on, the seller has to mark the items as being sold as 'blank tapes'. Ebay will pull any items that are being sold for the content (ie a video tape with a few programmes taped from the TV) fairly quickly. Hence you can see many items being sold with something like 'the listing of what is on the tape is just a guide to what sort of things the tape could be used for' and if the seller is especially cautious, they may add 'If the winner wants me to wipe the tape before sending it, I will, or alternatively you can do this yourself.' I guess it's kind of a 'work-around' for selling these items. I am certain that if the seller of these TOTP tapes had not added his bit about 'sold as unplayable blanks' this auction would have been pulled by now.

In light of the recent additions to the auction page- someone more cynical may see it as the seller beginning to panic that the tapes- which he clearly knows to be rare and 'an exciting find'- are stalling at a low price. I'd think that saying 'they might be withdrawn' would be a good tactic to draw bidders out quickly. This would lead directly into the 'reinstating' of the auction in the most recent added text, with the thought process being: "I know, i'll say I might withdraw this lot, that'll push the bids up quickly"..."Oh, if I say i'm withdrawing it nobody will bid though!"

There are a few mentions of money in the auction blurb- as one point the seller seems to be alluding to a previous thought of transferring the films to DVD and selling these to collectors. In light of this, i'd guess the following- it's a seller who is very convinced the tapes do contain rare material, and is looking for a *big* four figure payout here. It's not getting there yet though, is it! A continued stalling of bids could potentially see the lot withdrawn on the last day, which could be good for a private deal with Kal. The seller will have noticed the 2000 page views (and probably has tens of people watching the auction- although in reality this will mostly be people following 'the story' like me rather than serious bidders, and think that this indicates a lot of interest and a potentially sky-high end price.

The last two paragraphs are obviously sheer conjecture, and should be treated as opinion only. I'd also understand if a moderator saw fit to delete them as off topic/irrelevant opinion pieces. I just thought i'd offer my thoughts. I'm a Primary School teacher with a degree in Psychology, two things that help me to be pretty aware when it comes to motivation- especially for lying and deceit!

Good luck to all with retrieving this material.

(edited to make paragraph 3 more readable)

[Kev Mulrenan]

Good points Mark! From a fellow primary school teacher (minus the Psychology!)

The price will zoom up with last minute sniper bids (if it gets that far!

[Paul Rumbol]

Hi Kevin, i would rather they did go back to the BBC than in the hands of a private collector where they would disappear into obscurity. As Chris pointed out at the start of this thread there would be ways and means to ensure we do get to see this material after restoration.