About a week or so ago Xraffle brought to everyone's attention a complete set of all 190 Three Stooges shorts being sold on Ebay. I mentioned that I went ahead and purchased a set; and when it came in I would tell you about it. Well it came in today, and I watched a mixture of shorts off of the set so far.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=617&item=6400293117&rd=1First a note about the seller: This guy was very pleasant to deal with and was very upfront and honest. I notified him that I wanted to pay by Money Order and not be PayPal, so we ended up circumventing Ebay altogether. This could have been disasterous for me as he could have easily ran off with my $235 (which included shipping) and all I would have had for evidence were a handful of disputable emails; but he sent out the set as soon as the MO reached him.
About the set: This is a 40 DVD set of all 190 Three Stooges shorts with a bonus biography of some kind (I haven't looked at it yet) for 41 DVDs in all. Volumes 1-21 are Moe/Larry/Curly, 22-37 are Moe/Larry/Shemp and 37-40 are Moe/Larry/Joe.
In case some of you out there haven't figured this out yet, this is a "bootleg" set not made by Sony/Columbia. If you are going to wait for Sony to release all of the shorts to DVD then good luck. The shorts are ripped from a variety of sources. Some are ripped from DVD, some from VHS, and some from TV. I viewed a good mix of readily available and hard to find shorts. I believe I've watched Hula-la-la, Self-Made Maids, Punch Drunks, Matri-Phony, Malice In The Palace, Horsing Around, Dunked In the Deep, Mummies Dummies, Heavenly Daze and a couple of others so far. The noticable problem with the majority of shorts recorded off the TV was a "hiss" in the soundtrack, but it's not too distracting. Horsing Around was the only one so far to have any picture problems, but it was for about 4 minutes in the middle of the short and goes away. It doesn't really make Horsing Around less watchable than it already is. The 12 colorized shorts are the 12 that have already been colorized (the 8 by Sony in their latest releases and the PD shorts).
Is the set worth the money? Yes. Not every short is in perfect shape, but I didn't expect them to be. The biggest selling point to me is the chronological order and having them all in one organized set. It's fabulous for an anal-retentive such as myself. I also have the piece of mind knowing that I do not need any of the shorts (I had all of the shorts before in various places, but I've probably lost some). If you can afford it I would highly recommend buying this set.