My once-blank video cassettes ... I’d kept my tapes, complete with their intricate sticker-led cataloguing system My hoarding meant I’d retained VHS copies of family camcorder videos ...

That's about $4,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Blank tapes were priced at $20 ($72 these days). VHS was late to the game. Sony had launched the Betamax video recording system in 1975.

And not just the giant, colorful album artwork of vinyl records or holographic DVD cases, either: even the nondescript boxes for blank VHS tapes had a certain charm, if you looked for it.

For decades, though, video came encased in plastic rectangles called VHS tapes, which were played on one of the first classic consumer gadgets: the VCR. Like most forms of nostalgia, a ...