Goldstar HD - 1989 - CA
A cassette of about the same quality of a late 80's TDK D, Sony HF, Fuji DR-I or Maxell UR. It has a contemporary design for this time (1989), with a clear shell cassette. If only today's manufacturers were to understand how simple it is to put together an attractive cassette, they would enjoy much higher sales, but they insist on producing either late 1960's cassette designs or the same lame stuff that is still mass produced in the PRC, with absolutely no visual taste whatsoever.
Goldstar came late to come into the blank cassette game, but it is easy to see their decision was to go all the way to the top, or stay home. Their cassettes were very nicely put together with decent materials, smooth-cut tape pancakes, nice labels and elegant colourful wrappers. Their quality also won many loyal customers due to its great performance.
These were brought in for the Canadian market, but I don't know if they were also distributed in the USA. Very few available. Their high price is reflective of a rather high cost of acquisition. This is also most likely a one-off purchase of these tapes, much like the Memorex Cire II, the Ampex Grand Master tapes or the Akai III tapes... isolated treasures that will probably never surface again. Not common at all a tape!
NOTE: The 60 minutes tapes, only feature the "white" clip that holds the leader tape onto the hubs. There were two 60 minutes tapes with the red clips, but are SOLD now. The 90 Minutes tapes, so far, all seem to have the red clips... is this important? No, but to some of you it is, and I agree it does look nicer with the red clips. ;)
About Goldstar:
GoldStar was a South Korean electronics company established in 1958. The corporate name was changed to LG Electronics and LG Cable on February 28, 1995, after merging with Lucky Chemical. LG Cable was spun off from LG Electronics and changed its name to LS Cable in 2005.[1]
GoldStar manufactured a wide variety of products, including radios, televisions, air conditioners, MSX home computers, videocassette recorders, video and audio cassette tapes, microwave ovens, electronic typewriters, integrated circuits, escalators, elevators, dehumidifiers, and tractors. GoldStar televisions became a commonly sold brand of consumer television sets in the United States in the 1980s.
GoldStar Precision was a division manufacturing electronic test equipment such as multi-meters and oscilloscopes and industrial electronics.[2] The name was changed to LG Precision with the merger with many of the same products and model numbers being produced but with new branding. The measuring device division was acquired by EZ Digital in 1999, again with identical or similar model numbers.[3] The industrial products continue under the company name LIG Nex1.