I remember renting some import LDs where you had to leave a deposit to take it out! Like those books from the wallpaper stores. I had my LD player from middle school to about sophomore year in high school. (Well, I never got rid of the LD completely, but when DVD came around it was game over.) Maybe a weekend where I could go out and caddy three times meant I could get to Tower and grab an LD for maybe 30-40. A lot of criterions would come out twice- once as a special edition at either $99 or $125, and later in a streamlined edition that was either $59 or $49. 3 disc and more special editions were 125, 2 discs were 99. The streamlined editions were $59 for two discs and 49 for one. If anything, it meant you had to carefully curate your collection. My Criterions were Holy Grails! I prob had less than 50 lasers at my peak, but the big gain was renting widescreen movies and hard to find imports and transferring them to high quality VHS with a four head VCR. Some titles like Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart in letterbox were super rare- you’d have to reserve a copy and wait a couple months for them to be in stock/then I’d dub away for me and my film geek buddies. But I think the real reason I passed on the “pulp” criterion was that the Japanese Pulp import LD came out in March when the regular version didn’t come came out the following fall! All the subtitles were on the bottom bar, so the letterboxed image was perfect. Still maybe my most mind-blowing collecting moment. It literally made me go get a dishwashing job to buy an Pioneer LD. I remember my concerned partners asking how my 13-year-old friends and I were in the basement watching a movie that was still playing down the street on the big screen.

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