what to do with old car magazines

[tubbs]

hey guys, I have a very large stash of car magazines. the last couple of times I have tried to sell my doubles off, I had very few takers. I was as low as $2 apiece for Hot Rod from the 60's, good shape covers still in tack. what sparked my curiosity was a gentleman who wanted an old car ad in the magazine and offered me a dollar for it but he wanted me to rip the ad out of the magazine. Buddy, it's $2 for the whole magazine!! anyways, I was thinking of going thru and ripping major ads and articles out of them and selling them. I hate to tear up nice magazines, but it seams that the market for them has diminished greatly, but people will drop a buck apiece for muscle car ads. not sure what to do. my room looks like a hoarder lives there... in which he does, but i'm really getting buried.

[GaryR]

You can sell them at swap meets, but otherwise as you found out, you can't give them away. I ended up trashing a bunch from the mid 70's to 90's. They just aren't rare.  One possibility is to find out if there a local program to ship stuff to out of country military. Trouble with that is they are heavy and expensive to mail You might be able to give them away if you place an ad.

[chunkypeanutbutter]

Give em to grandkids, nephews, etc. and get them into classic cars!

[Petetrucker07]

I've got the same problem with keeping old mags. I have a 20 year collection of National Dragster. I was gonna go through them and keep the ones with articles of importance, races memorial covers, anniversaries of races and what not. I also have a large collection of 10-4 magazine, a truckers mag. They have a centerfold of the cover feature. Those I just rip out the center, usually toss or give them to someone who's lookin for reference or back issues. 

[cobraman]

How about the local VFW or places such as that ?

[Harry P.]

Put them on ebay and take what you can get. They'll sell. Somebody out there will want them. And you won't get a bigger group of potential buyers in any other way.

[Ace-Garageguy]

I'm interested in early Hot Rods. PM me what you have from the '60s if you want.

[FordRodnKustom]

I work with a guy who's son is a budding gear head...I GIVE them to him.

[lordairgtar]

I give them to the Veterans hospital.

 

[Tom Geiger]

The bottom has fallen out of the magazine market since many of us collected them as reference material, back in the era of paper.  Now people can instantly find any information they want on the Internet.  It's sad because I was always a paper guy with tons of magazines and two large lateral file cabinets full of car brochures.

Sometimes it's just not worth the effort to sell stuff. By the time you get done photographing them, writing the eBay ad and relisting them over and over... never mind packing them and mailing them... and having finicky buyers complain and threaten you with feedback extortion....  Been there, done that!

I found it much easier to bring them to my model clubs, and give them away for free. It was just easier and my main goal was to not throw them away, but to send them where they'd be appreciated.  This past year, a guy I know contacted me about donating his entire model car magazine collection to NNL East.  We had a person donate a complete set of Scale Auto Magazines the year before.  The International Model Car Museum was interested in the first three years, so we sent them to Utah.  We put the remainder of this complete collection out for sale at $2 a magazine, to benefit the museum.  We had very few takers,  and figure this was the center of the hobby at the biggest show!  Eventually a guy came along and made us an offer for the whole box, so we took it.    

So this past year, we arranged for the guy to come inside early and put all the magazines out on a "Free" table.  They went quick!  And hopefully all off to good homes in the hobby. And our friend achieved his goal of avoiding putting them out for recycle.

I have about 2 copier paper boxes full of car magazines of the past five years.  I am going to put them out for "Free" at NNL East this coming year!

 

[tubbs]

thanks guys. i have given plenty to the VA hospitals, local prisons, assisted living centers. it may sound greedy, but i dont give them the old ones. Ron, i wish i knew a younger hot rodder. he would get them all. most of the kids i know get everything on the net. only thing i use ebay for is reference pictures. never bought or sold, maybe i should start.

Bill, i will get a list together for you. would you be interested in SSDI's also (super stock and drag illistrated)?

[dieseldawg142]

..........

Edited May 11, 2018 by dieseldawg142

[Howard Cohen]

I haven't sold any magazines successfully for a few years. Even then they were cheap but I moved about 100 mags from the 60s. 

Last year I sold a pile of mags, about 400, for $40. I was just glad to get rid of them. I was given about 50 Corvette magazines this weekend and I plan to give them away after I scan through them. 

See if the local Boy Scouts or Girl Guides want some free magazines or some other local charity group, maybe the library. As a last resort, paper your garage walls  

[Muncie]

Might be worth a trip to the next automotive swap meet and find a magazine seller that is looking for inventory...  sell them all in one lot 

[Petetrucker07]

Hey, if nothing else, recycle them. I know papers value isn't much, but you'll get a little something and help the environment. Since its thing to be now, GREEN.

 

Just a thought.

[Don Sikora II]

In the last year or two I've bought quite a few 1950s and '60s car magazines at a kit/toy show in Milwaukee and at area antique malls. It's pretty unbelievable but the going rate seems to be about 50 cents apiece. That's asking price, not me making low-ball offers. I'm happy to get the ones I want, but it makes me wonder how the sellers find it worth the effort.

[1930fordpickup]

I think you could get more out of the full page ads than the whole thing. 

Anything that has a smoking reference  you might be able to pedal to a tobacco or cigar shop for wall art. 

The same goes for alcohol related ads could be sold to a bar owner for decor.

Just scan what you think is important car related info, including the ads for the aftermarket. 

If you do any diorama building those small ads look like a big poster on the wall of a shop. 

[Foxer]

I've given up saving car mags. I do still have old Model Car mags, though . can't get myself to trash them.

With new magazines I just scan into the computer articles I might want later for reference then trash. The big problem now if remembering and  finding what I've scanned.

[louie]

Hi Tubbs. I am very interested in your magazines. I just don't know how to communicate with anyone on the forum. If you are interested $$$ and you can get in touch with me because I do not know how to get in touch with you. I just love car and model car magazines. There's nothing like holding a magazine with lots of pages in your hands it's what I grew up with it's what I know. A computer or laptop just doesn't do it for me and that is probably why I am soooo computer illiterate. Thank you.  Jeff

[tubbs]

 

hey Jeff, if you look up at the top of the page, you will see an envelope, this represents PM's, or personal messages. you can talk thru here with someone else in private. you should have a red box by your envelope with the #1 in it. click the envelope and you will open up your mailbox. hope this is accurate.

[iBorg]

Some magazines still have value. I recently lost my Rodders Journals and Hot Rod Deluxe. Those are still somewhat in demand. A lot of value has to do with the title. Some magazines such as Hot Rod were very common in the early seventies with circulations near 250,000 (they claimed it on their cover). Others like Drag Racing USA had runs much lower. Curious thing, I am a paper guy. I don't know when I finally move back into my hobby room if I will move my magazine collection or not. It used to take up six large four drawer file cabinets. Of course, a lot depends on what they smell like.

[Maindrian Pace]

I've got a pile of Car and Driver from the '80s and '90s, I'll probably just dump them into the recycle bin.

[Roadrunner]

There are very specific magazines I want, and will eventually get, regardless of where I have to go for them. I have virtually none at the moment, but used to have a couple hundred.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Roadrunner

[Art Anderson]

One of these days, I am going to take the example of my late friend, Bill Harrison from Monta Vista CA, who while he had a HOUSE FULL of books and magazines about cars, clipped articles on the cars he wanted to build someday (primarily flathead V8 era Fords, but also the Classics of the 1930's), and put those clippings in file folders, stored them in a couple of filing cabinets.  It's getting time for me to do the same, as while I still love digging through several hundred pounds of old magazines, it's really rather tedious--so I plan on doing exactly the same thing--create file folders on cars that I might build, collect reference info into such specific folders (there is still far more information on many cars in print than online), then supplement that with printouts of such pics and historical info as may be online as well.  As for the rest of each of those magazines--getting time to contribute to recycling, by whatever channel and/or means makes sense.

Art

[gtx6970]

I have one of those 4 drawer,,, 5 ft tall file cabinets,,,full of old magazines.,,then in one of the boxes oranges were shipped in is full  of National Dragster  magazines,,,,,, Nothing newer than about 1974 or so