https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/disney-on-8mm/

Note how out-of-touch people not into our hobby are:

Zitat

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As the late Dave Smith, the legendary Disney Archivist told me, there is no sense in collecting these films, except for the box art or as a curiosity. They have no intrinsic value.

He said, “The old 8mm film versions of Disney cartoons are practically valueless today. Few people have projectors, the films have gotten brittle and practically all the films have been released on video cassette or DVD.”

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I guess he is right in a way. On the forums, the members we see are the big supporters of the hobby. Having said that, when I sell on ebay, 90% of my films to go people who are not members of forums, but unfortunately, in reality, the hobby has shrunk enormously.
Although I still add to our collections, I am at a point where I want to reduce the collection by half, not for any other reason other than I want it to be manageable, I want to see the films we have more than once in a blue moon and also, the room required to store it all.

The wording of the article you show here is way off the mark though. Theres probably no interest in the hobby as far as he is concerned, but to many cine film collectors, it means the world. We still see people buying up the Disney shorts and a couple of mine have been bought by collectors in the States so this guy is wrong in my opinion.

Yes, the films obviously still have value.

He doesn't mention how Disney's DVDs, Blu-Rays, and Disney++ not only digitally enhance their animated classics, but in some cases they censor them too.

I was reading recently on a cartoon forum where people were looking to buy Disney Derann prints, as well as 16mm prints, to do their own digital scans because they were so unsatisfied with Disney's digital product. Disney changes the color pallette, and in some instances does digital dirt removal that actually removes some of the animation! There was a big hoopla over the hatchet job they did with CINDERELLA.

The article doesn't mention that a badly scratched DVD or Blu-Ray becomes a coaster, while a scratched film remains...a scratched film.
You can't splice a disc, either.

Another point that is probably obvious to all of you:

Watching movies now has become a "time-alone" thing, with kids watching on their laptops or phones with earbuds on.
When was the last time anyone had a get-together to watch a movie on a TV screen?

Projected film encourages social gatherings. Back when I was a kid in the 70s, anytime people came over for dinner, it was a given that we would go down to the basement and watch films after dinner. I was the only one I knew who had a sound projector and commercial films. It was always a big hit with both adults and children, despite my modest (at the time) film collection.

Even in the afternoon ater school, my friends and I would take a break from outdoor activities to come inside and watch films. And the same titles were aways requested, even though everyone knew the films backwards and forwards.

There is something about short films, even digests, that really lends itself to repeated viewings. For example, I bought "I Wanna Be Like You" from THE JUNGLE BOOK when it first came out around 1977, and til this day I have probably screened that 30 to 40 times more than the VHS tape of the full-movie, and the DVD, that both came out years later.