A peach-colored house on a quiet street in northwest Largo is home to likely the world’s largest collection of “Titanic” on VHS.
As of Aug. 14, the 31-year-old who goes by his initials JD and declined to share his name, has amassed 2,121 copies of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster historical disaster romance.
“I grew up in a Titanic family,” he said. “So, it’s always been…the most iconic VHS I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”
A big chunk of his collection comes from donations around the country thanks to the success of his TikTok page. “Titanicfan97” has 118,000 followers and earns tens of thousands of views on almost every video posted.
The TikTok videos began when JD thought, “why not? I see people doing stuff like that all the time.”
His cheesy, nostalgic videos took off, especially when he inflected his voice to a nasally, autotune-ish pitch. And then followers began asking if they could donate their copies of Titanic on VHS.
“So, we opened a P.O. box and then people started dumping just tons of Titanic on us,” JD said. “I would say like 80%, maybe more, of this collection is donated.”
His posts have a wide range—from thrift store trips around the Tampa Bay area to opening donated boxes of Titanic on VHS. There are also plenty of unhinged videos of JD’s Jack Dawson doll (complete with DiCaprio’s face taped on) meeting fans on trips around the country.
JD’s collection of Titanic on VHS—“T on V,” as he calls it—lines the walls and shelves of one room and spills out into a dining area. His streaming and gaming setup is there, too, along with Titanic-themed curtains separating the mini museum from the kitchen and living room.
He organizes the more than 2,000 copies by format and seal. The gold widescreen editions snake around the room’s ceiling, held up by the baby blue standard double VHS tapes. The sealed ones—with the signature Paramount logo sticker—are lovingly organized on their own bookshelf.
But JD is far from stopping. He wants at least 1 million copies of the film so he can rebuild the Titanic using copies of Titanic on VHS.
“Kind of like the next Noah’s Ark, but instead of animals it’s all Jack Dawsons,” he said.
JD collects other Titanic memorabilia, too. There are over 100 copies of the movie’s soundtrack, reference books, an authentic prop from the film, international editions and fan-made arts and crafts. He also has collectible replicas of the iconic ship of dreams, a replica of an early 20th century life jacket and a water cooler he labeled “Iceberg Juice.”
“It’s a lot of Titanic,” he said.
Despite the size and uniqueness of his collection, JD said Guinness World Records won’t recognize it with a record.
“They said no duplicates; my whole collection is pretty much duplicates,” he said. “But I’m thinking if I build the Titanic out of ‘Titanic,’ that’s got to be a world record.”
His love of “Titanic” began in December 1997 when he saw the movie for the first time. A year later, more than 25 million copies of Titanic on VHS had been sold. The movie went on to win 11 Academy Awards and four Grammys. To say Titanic was and still is a cultural touchstone is an understatement.
To JD, Titanic is the greatest film ever made.
“James Cameron, Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), Celine Dion, Bill Paxton—I mean, it has everything you need in the movie,” he said. “It’s the most iconic movie of my life. I saw it when I was a kid in theaters, and I’m still watching it to this day.”
The collecting started about a decade ago when JD and his partner in collecting, who goes by Miss T, picked up 12 copies of “Titanic” on VHS at a hospice thrift store in Clearwater.
“So I just started collecting them and we just didn’t stop for years,” he said. “We kept collecting every time we saw ‘Titanic.’”
Years later, they had about 100 copies. And so “titanicfan97” was born.
On a recent trip to New York, Jack Dawson finally visited Times Square, the Nintendo Store and saw the “Titanique” musical.
JD and little JD also attend local fan conventions like MetroCon and the upcoming 90’s Con at the Tampa Convention Center.
But at the heart of JD’s impressive collection of VHS tapes is his love of the film. In his Titanic room, he has four different televisions playing the movie at the same time. He watches the nearly three-and-a-half hour movie at least once a day, and always on VHS.
“It’s just better on VHS,” he said. “It’s just like opening a fine bottle of wine or…putting on vinyl.”
Because of the nature of film, the tapes eventually begin to degrade from use, so he occasionally has to switch out the VHS tapes he plays. But that doesn’t make them any less valuable to JD, who loves that the initial run of Titanic on VHS came with a filmstrip and lithographs from the movie.
Some of the boxed sets also came with a coupon for a free copy of Titanic on VHS if you switched to Sprint.
“That’s double the awesome,” JD said. “I think that’s always really cool to have in the special editions.”
JD’s collection of dreams grows every day thanks to donations and the fact that nearly 60 million copies of Titanic on VHS were sold worldwide. In North America, 25 million copies were sold just in the first three months of the film’s Sept. 1, 1998, release.
“And eventually James Cameron’s going to call me with a pallet of these things and we’re going to have hundreds of thousands of these things,” JD said.
In the meantime, JD’s community of fellow Titanic lovers continues to throw support and VHS tapes behind him. They may come to gawk at the wallpaper of Titanic on VHS, but they stay for JD’s quirky, passionate personality and love of all things RMS Titanic.
“We have a lot of support; the community loves it,” JD said. “We haven’t met James Cameron, we haven’t met Jack Dawson. I mean, there’s Celine Dion, too. There’s still so much to do.”
UPDATED 08/15/23 10:07 a.m. Updated because JD goes by his initials and declined to share his name.
