Rarest episodes from non-erased series

[JMFabiano]

Over on Facebook on one of the GS groups, there was a thread about the banned/lost Match Game episodes.  It got me to thinking...what are the rarest episodes/series from shows that : 1) have not been wiped, and 2) have had some kind of rerun package over the decades? 

Ones that come to mind for me, for example, would be...

- The 3rd anniversary week of TPIR, aka the test for the 60 min. format.  First day got out there via trading, another from the Best of DVD set.  But the rest has not seen the light of day since 1975.  Weren't part of GSN's reruns...I am guessing because most of the eps. that week gave away furs, perhaps?  I do know the traded episode had a fur prize. 
- Bill Cullen's first Joker's Wild season.  Although USA DID rerun that season, it was skipped over by GSN and there aren't many eps. online from 1984-85. 
- For that matter, did GSN ever air TJW from between 1979-1982?  Only now, for instance, have I discovered an episode from the first season they had the neon set. 
- Family Feud '94: Richard reads a letter from someone who dislikes him AND Ray Combs. (latter mentioned by name by Richard, when he also plugs GSN)   Here's one I have yet to see at all, and being that GSN went through the episodes between late '97-early '98, I'm surprised it hasn't surfaced that I know of.

[PYLdude]

Couldn’t you argue that most of Dawson’s return season is a rarity now, especially since to the best of my knowledge the episodes haven’t seen the light of day since GSN stopped airing them?

[chrisholland03]

- For that matter, did GSN ever air TJW from between 1979-1982?  Only now, for instance, have I discovered an episode from the first season they had the neon set. 

They aired a big chunk of the '79 and '80 seasons with the 'Pizza Hut' set at some point in the late 90s.  I wish I had kept more of them.

[BrandonFG]

- For that matter, did GSN ever air TJW from between 1979-1982?  Only now, for instance, have I discovered an episode from the first season they had the neon set. 

They aired a big chunk of the '79 and '80 seasons with the 'Pizza Hut' set at some point in the late 90s.  I wish I had kept more of them.

This season also aired on Sunday nights in summer 2001.

As far as rarest, if I understand the question correctly, how about “Liar’s Club” or Bobby Van’s “Make Me Laugh”? USA aired the reruns of both in the mid-80s.

[Blanquepage]

All of PDQ (826 episodes) and Spin Off exist...yet we have none from the series in circulation with the exception of the PDQ pilot.

[SuperMatch93]

GSN only re-ran one episode from 1978-79 season of Price, and there's only a few clips and maybe one other episode on YouTube.

[knagl]

Up until Buzzr put them in the regular rotation, the Michael Larson episodes of PYL would have qualified for this thread. Not so much anymore though.

[Eric Paddon]

Tattletales, 1977-78 CBS.      Very little has ever been run from the last two years of Tattletales initial daytime run.

$20,000 Pyramid, 1979-80 ABC.    GSN in the Dark Period showed us most of June to November 1978.    There is still most of the last year and a half that has not gotten a regular airing.   A few select episodes from 79 aired on "Pyramid Thursdays" (but never any from 1980 after the set change) and we had the full week of the"Junior Pyramid" overdone many times during the DP I think because GSN programmers were confused and didn't realize it was just one week of shows at the time!

Also we only got the first 24 episodes of "Pass The Buck" but not the rest of the run during the DP and just the first-third of BTB-76 when it had its mere once a week airings.    "Chain Reaction" only got up to its half-way point during the DP.     "Go" managed to get through the entire cycle though four episodes at least were skipped.

[SuperMatch93]

Do we know how much of $20,000 Pyramid still exists? I'm tempted to believe that if mid-'78 exists then the rest of that run probably does, but I wonder how early on they would have stopped wiping.

[Chelsea Thrasher]

Do we know how much of $20,000 Pyramid still exists? I'm tempted to believe that if mid-'78 exists then the rest of that run probably does, but I wonder how early on they would have stopped wiping.

It was and remains my understanding that the week GSN started with (Sandy Duncan & Nipsey Russell, week of 6/12/78) is the first week of 70s Pyramid that exists in it's entirety outside of the three weeks of $10K that taped at Television City during the CBS run. GSN/Sony may have individual episodes outside of those points, but nothing that could be stripped onto a weekday schedule -  and nothing they saw fit to throw into a marathon or special during the era that they would have considered doing that

[TimK2003]

Adding onto Break The Bank, have any of the syndicated episodes with Jack Barry been rerun since the 70's?

[Ian Wallis]

Adding onto Break The Bank, have any of the syndicated episodes with Jack Barry been rerun since the 70's?

GSN ran 5 episodes of it during the late '90s, but nothing has surfaced since then.  I'd love to see more of it.

I'll add the following:

Press Your Luck
--the June/July 1986 episodes; USA ran them in the early '90s and they haven't been run since
--Sept 1986; these haven't been run since their initial CBS airings; they've never appeared in any rerun package

]Joker's WIld
--CBS episodes from 1974-75 time frame

High Rollers
--it was recently pointed out that the whole 1974-76 run exists, yet there's only one episode out there

[JMFabiano]

Adding onto Break The Bank, have any of the syndicated episodes with Jack Barry been rerun since the 70's?

I THINK they were part of GSN's 1997-98 run.  I at least remember getting an episode with a GSN bug and all. 

(I wouldn't know firsthand, as our cable company put GSN and another network on the same channel for awhile...as such, weekend evenings were cut)

(EDIT: yes, as per the post above)

Couldn’t you argue that most of Dawson’s return season is a rarity now, especially since to the best of my knowledge the episodes haven’t seen the light of day since GSN stopped airing them?

Buzzr did air the White vs. Burnett special, I believe.  GSN did air the Halloween episode I think, long after the 1997-98 period.  But generally, yeah.  And since that version of Feud was seen on weekdays and weekends alike back in the day, I'm stunned that the episode I mentioned with the letter about him and Ray has not turned up.  Only evidence I have of it was an old USENET post describing it. 

There's certain seasons of The (New) $25,000 Pyramid that GSN never touched as well.  And of course, assuming the tapes are intact, we have the entire runs of Cullen $25K, $50K, and Davidson $100K to consider.  (although some of that's cheating, as Davidson was never reran anywhere while the others technically were, on local stations and CBN respectively) 

High Rollers
--it was recently pointed out that the whole 1974-76 run exists, yet there's only one episode out there

Two, the Paley Center has one other episode, IIRC.  (they also have the one that's online) 

[Eric Paddon]

The Jack Barry BTB was never on the regular schedule.   GSN aired at most 4 episodes (maybe 5) at random points but only Kennedy BTB was on the regular schedule (Sunday nights).

"The Diamond Head Game" when it aired on Sunday nights did not get up to the point when it had some kind of format change I've read about.   We did get the infamous "Mercedes Benz" episode Bob talks about in his memoir (though he ends up being way off on a number of details)

Jack Narz "Beat The Clock" episodes are rare since the last time they were ever on the regular GSN schedule was weekends prior to the DP and it's doubtful the first season taped in NY exists (the first season of syndie TTTT is also lost)

[That Don Guy]

All of PDQ (826 episodes) and Spin Off exist...yet we have none from the series in circulation with the exception of the PDQ pilot.

I am under the impression that the only tapes of Spin-Off that exist are in a format that cannot be broadcast by modern technologies, and have to be converted at considerable cost, the same way that the first two seasons of CBS The Joker's Wild had to be.

Speaking of which, how far did GSN get through the first two seasons of TJW? Did they even convert all of the tapes?

Also, aren't there a few weeks of Trebek Double Dare missing for some reason?