MILWAUKEE, Wis. — The Wisconsin Humane Society and St. Jude Children's Research Hospitalboth received $40,000 from local YouTubers.
Red Letter Media, based in Milwaukee, is a YouTube channel with more than 1 million subscribers and at the end of 2022, they decided to conduct an experiment around the growing trend of VHS collecting.
Red Letter Media wanted to know if VHS tapes of obscure movies can sell for just as much money as VHS taps of classics like 'Back to the Future.'
So, to find out, they auctioned off a VHS tape of the movie 'Nukie' and announced all the money raised would be split and donated to the Wisconsin Humane Society and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
To make the tape even more valuable, Red Letter Media went out and bought a wood chipper. They then proceeded to put dozens of Nukie tapes through the chipper.
They kept one tape, put it in a plexiglass box, and posted it on eBay at the end of 2022. It remained online and active for about a week. By the time the auction closed, the bidding had gone up to more than $80,000.
There were more than 224 bids on the 1993 film, with the final bid coming in at $80,600.
You know what that means. Both the Wisconsin Humane Society and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital received $40,000. At the close of the bidding, the Wisconsin Humane Society took to Twitter and thanked Red Letter Media for the donation.
According to the organization, the donation was the largest amount raised in a community fundraiser EVER.
Nobody: @redlettermedia: let’s auction off a 1993 #Nukie VHS & split the proceeds with WHS & @StJude
— Wisconsin Humane Society (@WiscHumane) January 12, 2023
*raises $80,000*
WHS: 🤯❤🤯❤🤯❤
Our $40k portion is the largest amount raised by a WHS community fundraiser EVER. We are blown away. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. https://t.co/G43iULkxog
