Looking After Vintage Magazines.

[angeljenny]

I have a bit of a modern magazine obsession and, as it turns out, also a vintage magazine obsession!

How do you look after your old magazines?

I want to be able to read them but I don't want to ruin them!

I have 3 and have just ordered one or two (or five!) more from eBay so I need to figure out the best way to keep them. I have some old books (1850ish to 1960's) but they just live on my book shelf so don't get, or seem to need, special treatment.

 

[John in Covina]

If you are looking at serious storage then the idea is to protect against moisture, a lot of handling, and bugs. The best way is to put the in some sort of plastic cover / envelope. A friend has some comic books that arein covers and you can only handle them with cotton gloves.

Archival suppliers may have what you need.

Here is an article about comic books that may give you some ideas:
http://www.squidoo.com/comicbookstorage

 

[martinsantos]

John is correct, of course. Better the care you give to the magazines, more it will last. But if the paper of the magazines is good you don't have to be much afraid. For example, LIFE magazines (have a few numbers from 1946 to 1957) used a very good paper, and without great cares they are very well.

Newspaper paper is just terrible. I have a large ammount of them (my grandfather was a reporter between 1937 and 1971 and saved all pages where he wrote someting or got a photo published) and are immensely fragile, some almost impossible to touch.

 

[John in Covina]

Newspaper paper is just terrible. I have a large amount of them (my grandfather was a reporter between 1937 and 1971 and saved all pages where he wrote something or got a photo published) and are immensely fragile, some almost impossible to touch.

Newsprint paper tends to be acidic and disintegrate when oxidized, from what i have heard. i had a number of books published during WWII that also turned to dust. They were yellow then brown then just fell apart.

 

[martinsantos]

Agree. Paper in war years was very bad... Specially the english books from those days (have a few from Focal Press - the very best photo books from those days). The pages are completely brown, without any flexibility. To turn the page means to break the page.

I had to make copies to use them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The number one thing to keep in mind is to keep your pulp-paper magazines away from direct sunlight. I keep mine in tight stacks in a closet, and avoid leaving them out on the coffee table or whatever for any longer than necessary.

You don't need to go in for all that comic-book-collector bag and board stuff unless you're saving magazines for monetary investment purposes. If you keep them around to *read* or for reference, and won't go into a coronary if a chip or a nick develops on the occasional cover, reasonable precautions are all you really need to observe. I've been collecting Golden Era paper for thirty-five years now, and I still have many of the things I collected as a teenager.