|
Search | FAQ | US Titles | UK Titles | Memories | VaporWare | Digest | |||||||
| GuestBook | Classified | Chat | Products | Featured | Technical | Museum | ||||||||
| Downloads | Production | Fanfares | Music | Misc | Related | Contact | ||||||||
| RCA VideoDisc Rarity Survey | ||||||||||||||
I'm in the process of generating a VideoDisc rarity rating that will be added as an additional field to the CED Title Database. The quantity of individual CED titles manufactured is not obtainable from RCA or CBS, so the rating (from common to very rare) is being determined by performing a random frequency of occurrence assessment. This involves taking a large number of small CED samples and determining how frequently each title occurs. Since 1989 I have received hundreds of letters and emails in response to my "RCA VideoDiscs Wanted" ads that have been placed in newspapers and publications like Big Reel, Discoveries, Goldmine, Nuts & Volts, and the LaserDisc Newsletter, and also posted to Usenet, AOL, AppleLink, eWorld, Prodigy, GEnie, and CompuServe. Each of these individual listings can be considered a random small sample, which when combined with all the other listing will generate a frequency of occurrence for each title. Since this data came largely from people who wanted to dispose of their entire CED collection, there shouldn't be too much bias in the listings (like someone not listing a particular title because they believe it to be rare and want to retain it).
During most of this period, I merely requested that people send me a list of titles. Later on, as I learned there were a lot of titles with identical names, a request to include the bar code number was included with the ads posted to On-line services. But most of the data I have lists just the title. So for example, if someone listed "Treasure Island," there's no way of knowing whether it was the movie made in 1934 or the one from 1950.
It's with these identically named titles that your help is needed to determine just how rare each variation is. The form below has each variation listed next to a check box. Simply check off which version of the title you actually own (if you have both, check off both). The information listed in the square braces distinguishes between each version, and the number inside the curly braces is the universal product code that appears below the bar code on the back of the caddy (the last digit isn't printed under the bar code). After completing the form click the submit button at the bottom of the page, and your data will be forwarded to the CED Magic web site for processing.