A few years ago, not long after I moved from Miami to the Tampa Bay area, I purchased Cold War: The Complete Series, a six-disc DVD box set that presents the 1998 CNN series about the tense relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States between 1946 and 1991. I did not see the series – which is an unofficial sequel to The World at War, the classic British 26-part World War II documentary from the early 1970s – when it was shown on cable TV, and since my first 28 years on Earth was defined by the Cold War, I was keen on getting that DVD set.
According to my Amazon account’s Orders page, I purchased Cold War: The Complete Series on June 28, 2017, 14 months after I started the protracted process of moving to Lithia. The seller was Amazon Services LLC, and the price at the time of purchase was $45.24 before Florida sales taxes were applied.
I don’t watch Cold War often – it’s two episodes shorter than The World at War, but it does require a certain time commitment, and I rarely ever have the stamina to either watch a series regularly or binge-watch anything longer than a “limited series” (the 21st Century term for miniseries) with more than 10 parts. As a result, only the slipcover from my set looks a bit worse for wear; the DVD case itself is fine and the DVD discs are free of scratches and undamaged.
Cold War – The Complete Series was released by Warner Home Video a decade ago. In all that time, the series has not been upgraded to Blu-ray, and as of this writing (April 16, 2022), it is out-of-print (OOP).
This means that:
- If you want to get a set of Cold War – The Complete Series, it is no longer being manufactured by Warner Home Video or its successors at WarnerMedia, so any sets you can find online are either used or bought from Amazon and other retailers for sale by third parties
- These sets are now super-expensive
Yesterday, while I was browsing Amazon to see if by any chance there were affordable copies of the equally OOP Twilight Zone: The Movie Blu-ray (coincidentally, another Warner Home Video offering), I decided to check on the price of Cold War, just to see if the price of a set would be as highly inflated as the one for Twilight Zone, which, at least for now, is the only disc I need to complete my Blu-ray collection of Steven Spielberg’s commercially released films.
(In case you missed my post about my efforts to acquire the Twilight Zone Blu-ray, I discovered that the 1983 feature film anthology based on the classic Rod Serling TV series of the same name is OOP. As a result, the few Blu-rays that are available through third-party sellers are expensive. How expensive? Well, the one I would get if it wasn’t OOP costs – are you sitting down? – $149.00. That’s how much a San Francisco Bay area store called Rasputin Records is asking for it on its Amazon “storefront.” Another Blu-ray, which is offered by a seller all the way in Australia, is going for $1,645.99. And it’s not even in new condition.)
If you wanted to order Cold War – The Complete Series on DVD from Amazon, you would have to pay more than the $48.41 (including Florida sales tax) that I shelled out half a decade ago.
How much more, you ask?
Well, not as much as you’d have to pay Gagazet Media in Perth, Australia for that region-free Blu-ray of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Still, the lowest price for which you could get a six-disc set of Cold War from a third-party seller on Amazon is $257.14 – and that is for a set that is in Used-Good condition. I imagine that you could find it elsewhere on the Internet for a lower price; I didn’t check on eBay or Deep Discount, for one thing. But since it is OOP, I seriously doubt that you can find it at the price I paid five years ago.
Thankfully, I don’t need to replace my Cold War DVD set; I might not be the tidiest of persons, but I do treat my books, DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, and collectibles with the utmost care. I also don’t watch the series often – I think I’ve seen all 26 parts only a few times. Certainly not as many times as I’ve watched The World at War, which I own on both DVD and Blu-ray.
Now, I suppose, I have more of an incentive to be super careful with my Cold War – The Complete Series set!
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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