Well maybe this will help as I have reused tapes. I'm not exactly shooting anything of importance or for money so I figure why not. I will say however that the tapes were new and not used by god knows how many other students. I'd say buy a few, use them, get the footage to a hard drive and use them again. I have had no problem with drop out from mini DV so far and I know one tape has been used about 5 times. I'd say it mostly depends on the age of the tape. Have you ever tried to play a 25 year old VHS tape? AHHH!