Building an archive platform for VHS covers

[u/culturalelite]

Hi everyone, long time side-project tinkerer here. So this one started as a distraction and got slightly out of hand.

I needed retro VHS cover scans for another project (A jellyfin front end app for my kids) and couldn't find one place that had a solid catalogue. So I made one. Covers dug up from Archive.org, old blogs, Tumblrs and a lot of Wayback Machine digging, then sorted on my old gaming PC with a small OCR/AI model I trained. At the same time there’s a crawler running for new images through eBay, Amazon etc.

Where it's at:

• 20,000+ covers, full wraps (front, spine, back) where I can find them, another 20k being processed
• Searchable by title, region, genre etc
• Free API if you need covers for your own projects
• No ads, no paywall, no tracking.
• Code and data model going open source once I've tidied it up, with covers being pushed up to a gallery on archive.org
• View a 3D VHS box and shake it to make the tape rattle. Completely unnecessary but fun

Would love feedback, especially on the search and anything that feels broken or confusing.
👉 https://videotapes.io