I was wondering if any of you have recommendations for shelving.  I have about 1100 DVDs and Blu Rays and about 500 VHS pre-records (mostly rare) that are all arranged alphabetically, but they're mostly boxed up because I don't have enough shelf space. 

Recently, I bought two of these that I intended to place back-to-back:

https://www.wayfair.com/furniture/pdp/red-barrel-studio-multimedia-storage-rack-w005271447.html?piid=575608075

It turned out to be not by Red Barrel Studio, but the Oskar by Atlantic, which is avilable for less money elsewhere, and a flimsy piece of junk. It broke in half during assembly when I turned it over to put the back on. I have a bunch of IKEA bookcases that I assembled myself with no issues other than getting the nails in the back in the right place. They didn't want to allow me to return it for a refund, so they sent me replacements of the parts that were damaged for free.  Then I decided to add professional assembly.  It broke in half in a different way at the same step for the professional.  He then opened the second one, which was still sealed, and found one of the boards split.  They refunded my money on the professional assembly, since it wasn't assembled, and I had to fight with them for days about letting me return it even though it was purchased September 15.  They finally sent me return mailing labels two Fridays ago, and I finally got them back into the boxes and dropped off at a FedEx pickup point (for $2 a package since there isn't a FedEx Office to whcih I could easily bring them) today. Hopefully I will get a full refund.

The probablem is, I can't really find anything else. I live in a small apartment with ceilings so high that I can't touch them without a ladder (I'm 6'4", and I could touch the ceiling in my parents' house and all my previous apartments), so height is a priority, and I don't want to do the IKEA Billys because they're too big. The big box VHSs from the early days (The Human Vapor, The Last War, The Little Magician, and The Headless Eyes among them) are six inches wide by nine inches tall.  Most bookcases leave a lot of empty space, and I need to empty my bookcases anyway because some of my books by authors with surnames beginning with S are still in boxes (I've been in my apartment only three years and was too broke to buy furniture the first two--I started at the ends and worked to the middle when unboxing), so I really want something designed to hold DVDs (normal VHS slipcover boxes are the same height as a DVD keep case, just double the width). Almost everything I can find specifically for DVDs is made by Atlantic, and the Oskar is the tallest.

I've been looking at stuff designed for public libraries, but it's really not within my budget, and I didn't look long enough to see if they sell to individual customers because we're talking around $2,000 for most of them.

I posted on Facebook asking if it would be possible for a carpenter to build me something, but I didn't find one by that route.  I suspect this would be as expensive or more expensive than library-grade shelving.

It's gotten harder to find stuff, even online, as streaming has superceded physical media in popularity, so I figured people here might know.

Quoting mreeder50:

Quote:
I bought the material and built my own.

Marty

I did that too, for my records and CDs, as it was hard/expensive to get units to fit them efficiently.

However, I also live in a small flat, so for a lot of my DVDs and Blu-ray discs I put up shelves using (the black version of) this stuff:

I used wood pine for the shelves that I stained black and cut to the length I needed and also used the same wood to put ends on the shelves, so each 'unit' looks more like a bookcase rather than just shelves.  They basic construction isn't that attractive, but you can't really see anything except the edges of the shelves and the ends, once they're in use.

This is one in a corner, it goes from floor to ceiling and fills the entire space between the wall and the door.  (Horrible photo sorry, my phone's camera is broken.)  You can see they are more space efficient than the billy-style ones next to them and I get nine shelves in 'my' design in the same space needed for eight billy ones, plus the space from not having the vertical dividers.

You obviously have to drill loads of holes in your walls to put them up, but they're relatively cheap, can be made any height or width, you don't waste space with the vertical dividers and you can adjust the height between the shelves at any time for different media types.  Obviously if you can't or don't want to drill holes then it's not a very useful suggestion.

I also have over 3,000 discs stored under my settee, where I've put the discs in flight case style storage boxes (1,000 in each), with the sleeves stored in punched pocket sleeve holders, themselves stored in lever arch files and put in a bookcase.  I then got rid of the actual cases. I just don't have the space to put them on display.  The ones I put on the shelves are things like box sets, ones with unusual designs or covers, two discs in a case, etc.  The ones in the flight cases just had standard cases and standard sleeves.

I took mine out of the cases, put them in disc books, and store them on the metal shelves you get at hardware stores.  I still have a 1500 CD rack that has my CDs on it, but I've had that for 20+ years. 

(As far as the cases go, if I can reasonably assume that the title will hold resale value, mostly boutique label, I have those stored in tubs in my shed.)