Christmas has been and gone, and many of you will have been lucky enough to get some new additions to your steelbook collection.

If you’re looking for somewhere to show off and discuss your collection you might want to check out /r/steelbooks on Reddit.

The community is pretty small, but growing steadily, so now is the perfect time to head over and join in.

We had a chat with Daniel (aka ‘citricacidx’) and Shane (‘Mpax4059’), the two main moderators, who told us about themselves and the group.

First of all, some introductions:

Daniel: My introduction to Steelbooks was unusual. A colleague of mine at the time collected them mainly for reselling. He actually gave me a box of about 12 Steelbooks to sell and start my own reselling side work. Some classics that I regret selling in retrospect. All Future Shop / Best Buy classics. The Nightmare Before Christmas, Wall-E, Pinocchio, to name a few. I kept Ratatouille for myself and still have it. Eventually it turned from selling to collecting. I had to re-acquire TNBC. My first purchase was Batman Begins and The Dark Knight for $5 each (The Dark Knight Rises had just hit theaters).

Shane: I remember the very first DVD I ever owned actually. It was Pearl Harbor… My first Steelbook that I can remember ever adding to my collection was The Lion King Diamond Edition. I wasn’t even aware of the term “SteelBook” then but after a while I started to notice it more and more when looking at movies. I’m not sure what it was exactly that drew me into them but I started to like the fact that the cases were in a steel packaging and decided to start collecting them. Just the uniqueness of it is what draws me to the Steelbook packaging. Some people might call me stubborn or stuck-up, but I like to collect Steelbooks in new condition only. I can’t bring myself to buy used Steelbooks from ebay or anything like that. Yes, I do miss out on a lot of rare steelbooks, yes, I save a lot of money not going after the rare steelbooks and yes, I tear my hair out knowing I can’t afford them even if I did buy them used (hahaha).

Daniel: I open all of my steelbook. I prefer new and love the ability to physically pick out my steelbook, but that’s not always the case when you import. I don’t mind getting open Steelbooks. I actually had a sealed copy of the Future Shop Public Enemies that I ended up trading for an open copy of Public Enemies and another steel. It’s such an older movie for Steelbooks, I couldn’t bring myself to open the sealed one. I also got the Iron Man grail for much cheaper because it’s open.

While Daniel and didn’t create the SubReddit, they now look after it, moderating, contributing, and generally making it a pleasant place to hang out…

Daniel: When I joined the sub 2 years ago there were no posts even though the sub existed already. Slowly but surely we started to gain traction, and as Steelbooks started to become more prominent in the US market, we started getting a few more visitors and subscribers. We hit 1,000 subscribers in October which is awesome considering I think there were 30 when I started. We’ve actually surpassed 1,200 recently and who knows, maybe we’ll be a trending sub at the top of the Frontpage some day.

Shane: I’ve been a part of the /r/Steelbooks moderator team for 8 months now. When I began helping Citricacidx (Daniel) there were only 600 or so subscribers, but just recently we hit 1,000 followers which felt amazing! Traffic to the reddit page is steady, but it’s noticeably a little bit more popular around the holidays (go figure). Although we don’t have a huge amount of traffic I think that is a good thing. The community we have currently is very friendly and outgoing. We encourage people to share their collections and show off anything new they get for their collection (or their “pickups”). I enjoy seeing what everyone has in their collection and what they get in the mail or from their local department stores. Although, I will admit, I get jealous of some of them fairly easily :-p

Daniel: It’s a small but growing community. Steelbooks are still blossoming in the US market, so a lot of people aren’t aware of them yet. The international scene has tons of steelbook retailers in Europe and Asia and we’re just starting to catch up with them. I’d love for this Subreddit to become a bastion for Steelbook collectors to share and learn about new releases.

Shane: It was (and still is) a goal of mine to add more variety to the sub to help get other people interested in Steelbooks. Just recently, Daniel did a give away from his personal collection after getting 1,000K subscribers, which it the kind of things that I would like to do every now and then for milestones like that! This is the first and only reddit page that I mod but being with a small community and a very friendly community definitely helps! We don’t see too much trouble around here currently but that can be a problem anywhere once a community gets bigger and bigger. Can’t wait for that time to come (I say sarcastically).

So there you go. I have no connection other than reading and the occasional contribution, but i can vouch for the friendly and welcoming atmosphere, so why not head over to /r/steelbooks.