The only things originally stopping this troper going legit were SpecialUnit2, {{Brimstone}} and {{Journeyman}}. Oh, and {{Odyssey 5}}, but that was eventually found through eBay. Now we're just waiting for each Simpsons season to be released.

I still have my original SNES, now well over 15 years old and still working. For some odd reason, though, the reaction one time I posted about this online was "Get an emulator, stupid."

every emulator and rom i own is because of this

This troper enjoyed Budgie the Little Helicopter as a kid, and eventually wanted to see it again. Unfortunately, no one has it on youtube, and the only [=DVDs=] of it that exist are of the first half season. So now he's gone and started buying up VHS tapes of the series (There's only 3, with a total of 39). He has the entire first season burned onto his computer, and is working on getting the next two. Unfortunately, the majority of those VHS tapes are in the UK, so now he has to get them professionally converted to NTSC Standards (which is kind of costly, at $15 a tape). So much turnaround on shipping...is it worth it? Totally. And once he's done, he plans on selling the VHS so they can repeat the process.

This troper collects tapes of lesser-known cartoons for this very reason. And once he gets a video capture card, he'll be willing to share...

This MikuMikuDance-using troper has hit a small snag while working on a project. A model maker has been kicked off youtube, leaving me with no was to get the models. The models should still be there, but there's no known link. I gotta keep hunting around the copied files!

The worst part about collecting indie music is the lack of [=CDs=]. Plus, sometimes when a band puts up a song on iTunes, it sporadically (I'm looking at you, FreddyWexler) disappears so the newer fans are left going "what the fuck?" It means that ebay, amazon, etc. are ''completely'' out of the question. Plus, certain indie bands (I'M LOOKING AT YOU, {{FREDDYWEXLER}}) like to go and change their band name every goddamn year without telling anyone, so you end up having to know 20 fucking band names at once. And ''then'', they go and disappear off the face of of the goddamned Earth (does it need to be said? Freddy. Frigging. Wexler).

Oh yeah, and then certain lucky fans have all the songs, but for some bizarre reason can't be contacted. Or if they can, they ''never respond.''

It is at this point where the collector who is so strictly anti-piracy says "fuck this shit" and goes to the backends of the internet.

Some older out-of-print [=CDs=] cost a fortune to obtain legally, forcing me to turn to filesharing sites of dubious legality. And there's many albums that were only available on vinyl, and songs that weren't officially released to the public. Same for albums whose reissues were ruined by the LoudnessWar. I also have a pirate's chest of obscure and hard-to-find game ROMs.

OP here got Kill Hannah's now-out-of-print-album "American Jet Set" which, obviously, could've cost a hell of a lot more. It wasn't KH's fault--HOWEVER, when bands do "only release 50 copies!" it just pisses me the hell off, because, more than anything, I like to have the original. I could've gotten the songs...somewhere (not iTunes; unavailable there) but I spent my money to get the original copy. Crack is cheaper for the hard-core collector. But yeah, my point is: I share your pain.

This tropette DOES NOT OWN A VCR, but she keeps her old tapes out of sentimentality.

Buy one, then! You can still find VCR/DVD players floating out there.

Not even that hard to find. And a VCR that's ''just'' a VCR is likely in your nearest pawn shop for under $20. (I just got one. ^_^ Made in the 80s, still works perfectly.)

The classic WoW and SWG, private (pirate?) servers This Troper was seeing (and has friends that claim they play on them) may be an example of this. I justify it because Blizzard and Sony claim to have no plans for such servers, even if their "classic" portion has changed so that it was unrecognisable to a true classic player.

This troper and her boyfriend looked high and low back in the day for the original series of {{Transformers Generation 1}}. We eventually got a bootleg set from the internet that made fun of the FBI warning and had several episodes recorded from the original broadcast and not from the original masters. Further problems started when the entirety of Season Three was not on the discs, making it hard for us to own the complete series. Thankfully, a year later, Hasbro officially released the entire series, even in a neat DVD box!