About...

About The Magazine Collector Website

This site is social, and is developed as a communal “watering hole” where collectors, dealers, and other people having an interest in magazine collecting can come to learn, share, and contribute. The content presented here is intended to be both educational and interactive. Our members consider themselves as participants in an online community that each helps build and flourish by sharing views, experiences, and information about collecting aviation magazines.

This website is about many interrelated and overlapping topics that range from principles of collecting rare things, to how to invest in collectables.

One perspective revolves around collecting rare “Golden Age of Aviation” magazines. This theme expands the scope of this website to encompass:

·         Pulp fiction
·         The first adventure superheroes
·         Genesis of comic books
·         Aircraft (real and imaginary)
·         Aviation art
·         Aero-modeling
·         Magazine publishing (pre-World War II)
·         And more…

In other words, there’s something here for just about everyone.
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About Using This Site

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The Magazine Collector community website is open to the public.

Both non-members and members can participate and contribute, as follows: 
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Non-members can submit questions on the Q&A page
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Only members can post to the following pages:
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·         Home (blogs page)
·         Forum
·         Buy/Sell
·         Resources
·         Gallery
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Only members can view the following pages:
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·         Forum
·         Buy/Sell

About Membership

Membership and all site activities are always FREE!

There are two categories of members:

BASIC Members can:
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o   Access and post to the Forum and Buy/Sell pages
o   Access the Blogs, Resources, and Gallery pages

“AUTHOR” Members can:
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o   Post their own guest blogs
o   Submit content to the Resources page
o   Contribute photos/images to the Gallery page

BASIC membership is required to become an AUTHOR member.

The BASIC Membership form allows for selecting individual AUTHOR-Member activities.  
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About The Magazine Collector Founder


While I know how I came to be a collector of rare magazines, I often reflect on what meaning my almost lifelong engagement in this avocation has for me.

Here’s my short list of what I get out of acquiring, building a collection of, preserving, and even disposing of, rare magazines such as those in my current collection:

·         I’ve always had a fascination with TWW (Things With Wings). I often scamper outside when I hear the throaty roar of a warbird or racing engine. Even though I’ve experienced enough air shows like Oshkosh and the Reno Air Races in my life, I just can’t seem to shake that innate enjoyment of seeing a plane in flight. With my collection, I get that same enjoyment of imagining those airplanes depicted on the magazine’s pages in flight. This sounds a little strange perhaps, but it’s true. Maybe my extensive career as an aviation magazine editor is part of it, since my job required me to convey that same enjoyment of flight to others through the pages of my magazines.

·          The covers of the Bill Barnes Air Adventures, Air Trails, and Air Progress issues are some of the finest aviation art ever created. I like to collect things that are pleasurable to not only look at, but have such characteristics as giving off the unmistakable scent of pulp paper.

·        As a publishing professional, I of course appreciate and value the technical aspects of magazine production. Every item in this collection is the original Street & Smith publisher’s copy. I turn a page and see handwritten marginal notes from the publisher, the editor, the art director. I happened to share editorial offices with Bill Winter, one of the original editors of the very magazines I know have from the offices in which he worked when he was just starting out. Seeing his handwriting on a magazine page from some 80 years ago always sends a chill up my spine and, in a way, I’m glad that I am preserving Bill and part of his work.

·         I’m a professional collector who, since I was an undergraduate, bought and sold rare magazines. I am not a dealer, but I do always acquire with a purpose of making a profit down the road. With magazines, I don’t do much in buying or selling of individual copies of periodicals. I’ll buy an individual copy of a magazine as a working copy, but I’m just not that excited about serial magazine collecting, in which the collector tries to acquire a copy of a particular magazine title published during a specific time period, or by a particular publisher. I gravitate to collections like my current one that has a uniqueness because all the items are original Street & Smith publisher’s copies.

There are probably other reasons why I enjoy rare magazine collecting, but these always float to the surface when I have a copy of one of these special magazines in my hand.

The Magazine Collector

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