No More Treasures: The Death of the $5 Bin

Old Wal-Marts all over the land are being remodeled to fit the company's new identity. You may have noticed their new starbursty logo show up on the scene last year. While remodeling stores as stark and anxiety-inducing as Wal-Mart is a worthwhile mission, I can't help but mourn a terrible casualty in the process: the $5 DVD bin.

The idea behind the $5 DVD bin was quite simple: Wal-Mart tosses in all of the obscure, over-produced, or out-dated DVDs that it has into a giant wire bin and lets customers have at it. I loved this bin for a number of reasons, and my recent discovery of its departure came as quite a shock (although I fully admit that I didn't drive around to other stores to check on their bins, nor do I have any idea if this bin-phenomenon existed outside of the Pittsburgh area).

First and foremost, the $5 Bin offered suburban shoppers a thrilling hunt. When I was a kid, my parents took me to this restaurant, and when I was done eating I got to pick a little plastic prize out of this wishing well next to the cash register. As an adult, I can't justify picking a prize out of any such well (and the restaurant is long gone); however, reaching into that $5 Bin created some sort of connection to my youth. The dream of finding that one hidden treasure amidst the scores of "50 Classic Westerns" and copies of Double Jeopardy was something every shopper had when he or she reached into that bin.

The $5 Bin was not only a way to kill a good 15 to 20 minutes, it was a frivolous reason to finally pick up a copy of some movie you wouldn't normally pay money for. "I was going to just go home, but hey Rambo III is in the $5 Bin; let's make tonight a Rambo night!" The bin was also good for collecting old versions of DVDs, which got the boot from store shelves thanks to movie studios' constant need to double and triple dip on releases. Who needs that special edition of Big Trouble in Little China when this regular version is five bucks? And then there was the rare occasion of actually coming across a treasure. I remember once I discovered the deluxe edition of Escape from New York in the bin, probably cast there because of some blind inventory gaff. Of course, the bin was more than just John Carpenter and Rambo movies... I think.

The only thing better than digging through the DVDs yourself, was watching others go to town. Like lions fighting over the carcass of a dead zebra, territorial instincts kicked in the moment two people tried to dig through the bin. The last thing you wanted was for the other guy to find the only copy of Karate Kid. Plus, the physical logistics of the bin made things all the more tense. One person could spend ten minutes digging through DVDs, but the second another person attacks the pile from the other side things start to slide. Suddenly the DVDs you scraped and clawed through come crashing down on you.

Occasionally some shopper would stop by the bin and actually try and stack the DVDs, as if organizing them was possible. The problem there is, like any sort of structure imposed on a society, not everyone is going to agree with your plan. You may want the DVDs stacked, but someone else wants to sift. Then a third guy shows up and starts diving in to the DVDs, scooping them out with two hands. It's a mess. It's anarchy.

If anything, the $5 Bin was a wonderful social experiment. It gave people hope, taught them how to hunt, and maybe gave them a taste of old fashioned gold prospecting. If anything, it showed me that people will value a good deal much more when it's thrown into a bin with other good deals. The $5 Bin created an atmosphere of "We're just trying to get rid of this stuff," and that's something I can dig.