Old Big League & Rugby League Week Magazines

[bileduct]

A lot of the Grand Final tapes are actually recordings of the entire Grand Final day, including Presidents Cup and Reserve Grade and all of the crap in between. That's why there's two tapes of a lot of them in the list.

What a blast watching some of this old stuff. Leichhardt Oval with a few thousand people sitting on the hill, field and players covered with mud, really prominent cigarette advertising, contested scrums, shitloads of niggle...

Edit: LOL, I should have said hundreds. There's definitely not thousands there. Laurie Nichols is certainly there though.

 

[ShaneO85]

wow you've got half a museum there mate. Oh for a time when scrums were contested. Once you have it all stored on your hard drives it might be worth you giving a call to RL HQ and seeing if they want copies of anything for the RL hall of fame/museum, or even the clubs for their displays.

 

[bellyache]

How much $$ you want for all cards and mags?

 

[siv]

Great collection. Still got my Big Leagues from 75. Just argue with the wife every year on where to store the new years stuff

For VHS to DVD conversion it will be challenging as the tapes get dirty over time and will dirty your player very rapidly before you finally get to clean tape

I had to play the first 30 min about 3 or 4 times before the tape was clean enough to action a clean record to DVD

I would bypass DVD and get them onto computer hard drive. They will age better there and you can make backups on mass much easier. 2TB external drives are pretty cheap these days

 

[bileduct]

Great collection. Still got my Big Leagues from 75. Just argue with the wife every year on where to store the new years stuff

For VHS to DVD conversion it will be challenging as the tapes get dirty over time and will dirty your player very rapidly before you finally get to clean tape

I had to play the first 30 min about 3 or 4 times before the tape was clean enough to action a clean record to DVD

I would bypass DVD and get them onto computer hard drive. They will age better there and you can make backups on mass much easier. 2TB external drives are pretty cheap these days

Thanks for the advice mate. Do you mind elaborating on the hardware and software you used to convert your stuff? I'm using a Hauppauge Colossus with the composite breakout cable as well as the ArcSoft Showbiz software that came bundled with it for capturing. Was planning on using something like VideoReDo for editing, but have no got that far. I'm encoding everything at 5MB variable bit rate peaking at 7MB which is around 2.1GB per hour.

I've got a 16TB NAS and the plan is to go straight to storage instead of DVD.

I've done two tapes already today which transferred a lot better than I thought they would. I'm on my third right now which is the Canberra v Balmain semi final from 1988 and one of the oldest tapes of the collection which is presenting a few viewing issues. There's periodic rolling noise in the top 1/4 of the screen and a little bit of grain, but nothing overly serious or unwatchable.

I've tried reading a bunch of forums but this whole conversion process seems like a science in itself to get the absolute best results. I would appreciate any advice you have.

 

[bileduct]

wow you've got half a museum there mate. Oh for a time when scrums were contested. Once you have it all stored on your hard drives it might be worth you giving a call to RL HQ and seeing if they want copies of anything for the RL hall of fame/museum, or even the clubs for their displays.

Good idea mate, I will get onto the Balmain Tigers Football Club and see if they are interested. A friend has been telling me to contact the ARLC too. It will be interesting to see what happens.

My mum is a mad Balmain fan and she is already pretty thrilled about the interest these tapes have already generated just from the punters on here.

 

[bileduct]

How much $$ you want for all cards and mags?

We're most likely going to hold onto the mags for quite a while longer but the cards may be up for grabs at some point. Unfortunately we've only found about 1/3 of them so far (the ones in the pic), all the ones after that are in a box somewhere that we haven't come across yet.

I'm sure I'll update this thread with more info on those when they surface.

 

[murraymob]

Likewise, wish my mum kept some of her 80s Parra stuff.
I'm trying to start the collection, farkloads of DVDs and books with a few cards.

if you after cards and early ones Dans collectables is the place .I got a lot of early penrith 67 cards from him .He would have a lot of parra cards

 

[siv]

Thanks for the advice mate. Do you mind elaborating on the hardware and software you used to convert your stuff? I'm using a Hauppauge Colossus with the composite breakout cable as well as the ArcSoft Showbiz software that came bundled with it for capturing. Was planning on using something like VideoReDo for editing, but have no got that far. I'm encoding everything at 5MB variable bit rate peaking at 7MB which is around 2.1GB per hour.

I've got a 16TB NAS and the plan is to go straight to storage instead of DVD.

I've done two tapes already today which transferred a lot better than I thought they would. I'm on my third right now which is the Canberra v Balmain semi final from 1988 and one of the oldest tapes of the collection which is presenting a few viewing issues. There's periodic rolling noise in the top 1/4 of the screen and a little bit of grain, but nothing overly serious or unwatchable.

I've tried reading a bunch of forums but this whole conversion process seems like a science in itself to get the absolute best results. I would appreciate any advice you have.

Nothing fancy. I would copy the Video onto DVD and edit them there. I found my Panasonic DVR was a much better editor encoder and then use DVDFab5 or Free Studio to transfer it on computerdisk. Usually keeping the DVD format. Add a picture so Window Media Player picks it up

There are lots of formats if you store it in AVI or MPEG format. VHS however is only lower resolution something like 576p.

Your noise maybe coming from old tape depositing its degrading tape on the video heads

 

[bruisershark]

i would be keen on the cards when u decide to sell.

 

[Henson Park Hornets]

Awesome collection. I'm after copies of any international games that you've got, including the club matches from the roos tours especially. Will cover costs and chuck in a case of beer for your efforts!

 

[Non Terminator]

if you after cards and early ones Dans collectables is the place .I got a lot of early penrith 67 cards from him .He would have a lot of parra cards

Yeah I like that shop. Sadly not going after Parra cards for mum, but looking to keep building the Roosters collection!

 

[bileduct]

Just a minor update. So far I've converted about fifty of the tapes. The quality is reasonably good and about what you'd expect for twenty year old tapes. Some are a little grainy but all so far have been very watchable. Progress is pretty slow as I can only do about 4-5 tapes a day.

Right now I'm converting Australia vs Wakefield Trinity from the 1990 Kangaroo tour. This is a classic for all the wrong reasons. The referee is a psychopath and hammers Australia 26 - 7 in penalties, puts two Aussies in the sin bin and sends three off.

 

[Ulysseus]

Just a minor update. So far I've converted about fifty of the tapes. The quality is reasonably good and about what you'd expect for twenty year old tapes. Some are a little grainy but all so far have been very watchable. Progress is pretty slow as I can only do about 4-5 tapes a day.

Right now I'm converting Australia vs Wakefield Trinity from the 1990 Kangaroo tour. This is a classic for all the wrong reasons. The referee is a psychopath and hammers Australia 26 - 7 in penalties, puts two Aussies in the sin bin and sends three off.

I hope there was a betting probe.

 

[MacDougall]

That was 1994 and you could get 5 "gold" cards that represented the 5 best players from the previous season. If you have the Mark Coyne gold card, please let me know.

And whatever you do, do not throw any of that stuff out. Sounds like you have some absolute gold there...monetry value aside, it's better if it goes to fans of the game than being turfed.

I reckon she's talking about the megamorph cards. I bought literally one packet of footy cards in about 1995/6 and got a redeem card and asked my grandad to send it away for me. I dunno what happened to take so long but I got a letter in the mail in 1999 with a holographic Alan Langer megamorph card and took it to a card dealer who said it was worth $80. Gotta be worth more now.

 

[MacDougall]

Also for the love of God contact Frank Puletua. I know you probably want to keep it all but you'd be a hero if you donated this stuff to the RL Museum.

museum@rugbyleaguecentral.com.au

 

[bileduct]

I reckon she's talking about the megamorph cards. I bought literally one packet of footy cards in about 1995/6 and got a redeem card and asked my grandad to send it away for me. I dunno what happened to take so long but I got a letter in the mail in 1999 with a holographic Alan Langer megamorph card and took it to a card dealer who said it was worth $80. Gotta be worth more now.

Yep, those are the cards my mum has. From memory she had about 3 or 4 of the redeem cards but I never saw the actual holographic cards.

All of the cards from about 93 onwards are in a box somewhere that hasn't been found yet.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

Also for the love of God contact Frank Puletua. I know you probably want to keep it all but you'd be a hero if you donated this stuff to the RL Museum.

museum@rugbyleaguecentral.com.au

I know it's not my stuff, and it's your right to keep/sell, but I agree with the museum donation. It's a sad fact that too much RL ephemera has been lost over the years and clubs/NRL (ARL, NSWRL/QRL etc) just don't pay enough attention to their own history.

This is an absolute treasure trove. God bless your mum.

I know someone who had every Big League and RLW from the mid-70's to about 2010 and they were going to turf them and I pleaded to them I'd buy them. They ended up keeping them - phew. But I'd have scanned every page and donated them to the NRL (and now, the RL Museum).

Frank Puletua will be your best friend forever.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

IF you want to sell the cards - try www.ozcardtraders.com.au .

Real RL footy card collectors, will give you great prices and won't cost you like EBay would.

For prices, check out www.dansnrlcollectables.com

 

[PaddyBoy]

Right now I'm converting Australia vs Wakefield Trinity from the 1990 Kangaroo tour. This is a classic for all the wrong reasons. The referee is a psychopath and hammers Australia 26 - 7 in penalties, puts two Aussies in the sin bin and sends three off.

My memory is hazy, but Dad always talks about a French touring team coming out to Lithgow and getting beaten by the local team. Apparently the ref was from Lithgow and the penalties were about 40-0.