Am new to Lost Media what is the easiest lost media to find?

I've found a decent amount of stuff on archive.org. I'm enjoying a lot of old gaming and family/kids magazines currently :3

The easiest “lost” media to find is the stuff that exists but no one has taken the effort to archive it. It has no wiki, it’s not on Archive org, there is no videos about it. Yet, physical media exists for it and can be easily obtained from eBay or a thrift store. This is very common with old pc games and straight to vhs/dvd educational/instructional films.

If you feel like you can’t hunt these down. You could start by helping out with Unidentified media. Honestly I found a bunch of them for people by just Googling. Sometimes it’s not always the first result and you have to do a lot more digging. Sometimes similar to stated in my first part, the media they are looking for might only be particularly archived.

Yeah like some episodes of Saved by the Bell that aren't uncut on DVD are uncut on VHS but nobody bothered to rip those tapes yet.

Usually it just involves contacting creators/anyone who worked on something to see if they have a copy or if they can point you to someone who does.

My guess is that there's a lot of lost media on YT that you just need to search for, typically these aren't that lost and it's just that not a lot of people are talking about it so they don't see any reason to look for it.

As others said, contacting people is a start. While not everyone is on social media, talking to people who are established in that area or have connections to those people can help. As an example, I was able to get the status of a lost horror film verified over Facebook by the director and it was a super painless, casual ordeal.

But also do your research to see if something is even lost in the first places. Chances are that it probably isn't, depending on what it is. It just takes time and rolling your sleeves up to find it. Emphasis on the time part because it feels like these days with the booming popularity of the topic, people get far too discouraged early on, throwing their hands up and declare something as lost when they're still taking their first steps. It leads to situations where what they were looking for is found in a very short amount of time, and I do mean very. I've seen people have their "cases" resolved in less than a few hours - or in one recently, under ten minutes. Definitely exhaust all of your other resources and options before defaulting to it being genuinely lost, and in this day and age with platforms like Reddit and message boards still being around, you're sure to find someone who could help.

Another important thing to keep in mind is just because it isn't available for streaming (be it something like YouTube, HBO Max, Spotify, Vimeo, Steam etc) that doesn't automatically mean it's lost either. There is just some stuff that's generally rare or hard to find; especially if it had a limited release (if any), is since long out of print or it's has some form of historical importance and is being secured in some Archive. Like with doing any research, be sure to do your fact checking to make sure things are up to date and accurate.

As for what's the easiest to find, try not to look at it that way. I feel having that mentality sort of takes the fun out of the whole thing. I would say to consider your own interests before diving in. What are you passionate about? Be as oddly specific as you want. There's no limit to it.

Let's say your interests include DOS games, classic literature, and animation (nondescript). That alone opens a ton of opportunities to explore because there's a good amount of content out there, both historical documentation and thriving communities to get guidance from. Also, consider where you are geographically. Just about every country and region has their own lost media - even a local level, potentially. That alone could get you curious to look into things more.

All of this is to say to go at it with an open mind, realistic expectations, and don't forget to enjoy the process. Not all lost or unaccounted for media will be found in a discount bin at a thrift store, a sketchy website, or is just out there in the open. It would be great if it was that simple all the time with easily solved cases, but unfortunately that's not how things play out often. But don't let that discourage you. The days where there are huge breakthroughs are a blast and being able to share it (be it a topic or lead) and just have that space to talk about it is another bonus.

Certain "lost" tv shows might be easier to find then you think. Chances are there might be an official DVD release that only came out overseas, I was just discussing that in thread for the Australian kids show "Mission Top Secret", it turns out the first season actually got a DVD release in Germany back in 2016(and it's got English language options as well)Germany was also as far as I know the only country to get Northern Exposure with all of the original licensed music intact on DVD.