So a studio in the early 2000's might have made 20,000 copies of a DVD (I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air, don't quote me on this), and now studios make runs of 2,000 copies, in the hope of selling them all, because noone is paying for the warehouse space for things one might sell in 10 years time.

As to the availability of old scenes: probably most studio persons simply consider their porn not as a collector's item, but rather like perishable goods: it's hot when it's new, but when it's older than a few months, nobody cares anymore, one might as well delete it from the servers. After all, it's the number of *new* scenes that is a selling point for web subscriptions, but the depth of the catalogue is seldom really advertised. Just have a look at the Mike Adriano thread when people complained about the lack of new updates in Covid times - up to the point where the thread had to be closed.

A bit off-topic rant:

Other studios (ASM as distributor for Perv City, Spizoo etc.) go another way and simply don't do pressed DVDs anymore, but burn to DVD-R (totally unacceptable for a collector - if I wanted that, i simply can download the scenes - at a much better quality, I must say - from the web, and if needed, burn it to a DVD myself.
Other studios still flood the marked with cheap pressed DVDs of years old scenes. Simply have a look at Pulse Distribution, which does the DVD manufacturing/distribution for all the Vixen media group (Tushy, Vixen, Blacked, ...) and Mindgeek (Brazzers, Mofos, Realitykings, ...) but has also some 'shady' labels "Pure Pleasures""Raven Productions", "All Niche Productions", "Aura", "JizzCenter", "Onyx", "CutiePie", which are simply repackaged scenes that are anything from 20 years to 2 years ago. Old 4x3 content stretched to 16x9, or simply zoomed in etc. It's really the last point in the commercial exploitation chain. Still, it must be somewhat lucrative for them, and still possible to do pressed DVDs for a profit. Or perhaps it's the sheer number.

[Link]

Yes, most studios probably don't see their stuff as collector's items, although some studios produce DVDs that they call Collector's Editions. And of course a "studio" might actually just be one guy filming and one girl acting.

Similarly, most porn users probably don't see porn itself as a source of collectibles, although a small percentage of fans have collected across the decades, and many users may not even have heard of ADT or have any interest in it. There are some 55,000-60,000 ADT members, but probably billions of porn watchers.

I guess for me it is the beauty of a given performer, and the way she "exhibits" her beauty, that is what I call "collectible." Each of that performer's scenes is unique and essentially unrepeatable. To me there is something very special about that, especially if she has a look and attitude you wish you yourself could encounter as a man in "real life."

When I leaf through a collection of one of my favorite star's DVDs in a disc album, I feel like I am touring an Art Gallery. It is also fun trying to be the "Columbo of Porn" when searching worldwide for a rare DVD of one of your favorites.

You mentioned DVD-R's. If using a computer for viewing, one can often fit a 4K porn scene on a DL-DVD, if the scene is less that 8 GB in size. So I see your point about going for the new web scenes and saving them that way. I have done that with some recent DogFart scenes.

Also related is that I recently asked the studio DreamGirls to send me a list of all the titles they had of their model "Sophie" (Sophie Strauss - Guinevere - Melisande). She was on a number of their DVDs around 2010-2012. After they sent me the list, I ordered several of her DVDs from them.

I then received an interesting set of DVDs from them in the mail. Most of the DVDs appeared to be DVD-R's, with black lettering on the white upper surface, but each DVD-R did appear to have the original ISO image file. So I guess the studio wisely kept the ISO's after finishing the 1st run of the standard pressed DVDs.

One of the DVDs was an original pressed DVD in a case with the cover art. So I guess they still had some originals left of some titles. To me, Sophie has a special physical beauty worth preserving.

Along the same lines, I joined the star Amber Chase's OnlyFans, and she had exclusive rights to the Bellezza Video series, but the Bellezza site itself was defunct. I offered her $75 for a HD copy of Sophie's scene in Bellezza Vol 1, which I had the DVD of (480 of course) but which was shot in HD. To me this was like adding another collector's item to an Art Gallery. I also asked Amber about the master tapes, and she said they ended up in a landfill!

I did eventually purchase a master tape of Sophie, who was in this instance Guinevere, after offering much more than $75 to another studio. It seemed magical to actually receive the tape and to watch it on an old camcorder purchased for that purpose, and then to transfer her 3 consecutive scenes losslessly using FireWire to a hard drive and then from there to two DL-DVDs.

It was a miniDV tape, which apparently records video digitally and holds about 13-14 GB of data per 60 min. To me this tape was another "collector's item." A master tape of a video, even at 480, is usually of somewhat higher quality than the pressed DVD that results from the transfer. I saw that in this tape, as I also had the DVD.

Sophie was also at Suze Randall's site, and when ebay still offered lots of porn items, I bought some original slides offered of the shoot Sophie did there. Those would be seen as more-traditional collector's items.

And even more traditional, I have a few magazines with her in them.

I have been trying to do things like the above with other stars' works, and it has been intriguing and rewarding.

So this is an esoteric hobby, trying to be a "Porn Preservationist." Or simply, an aesthete.

[Link]