Old Magazines

I am a magazine fan. Too old to be active with hot rods or motorcycles anymore but have boxes of magazines for them. I will do something with them someday. Model train magazines are my current hobby and don't take up that much room, I will keep them.

I keep the ones I like and put the rest on eBay in large lots.  Got rid of hundreds of mags that way.  There is always someone who want them.  I have a complete run of CTT and MAD and a near complete run of PLAYBOY so those will bring huge bucks on the day I decide to sell.

Took about 200 MR & OGR magazines to the Timinioum show and traded them with a guy for a few cases of freight cars he had for sale. 

 

Traded a large collection of OSN for a very well done custom mine scene.

 

Gotta be realistic, life is not long enough to  go thru stacks of old rags.  Getting rid of a whole buncha stuff these days.

 

Anyone want a bunch of curved side frames?? tt

I keep all my train rags.  Some times it's nice to relax with an oldy but goody.

We live in a house which the family has owned since 1931 , so we have stuff!

Not hoarders TV show but 80 years does make for a collection of things.

I have tossed most of our old magazines and once I read the new ones I treat them like newspapers and toss them. I agree with tgtains the empty boxes take up enough space. 

78s & 45s well that is a different story!

 

If I had the room, I'd keep all my old magazines. For those of us interested in the history of the hobby, both the articles and advertisements are very interesting to read after 20 or more years.

The last time I thinned my stacks, I went through each issue, and took out the pages I thought were particularly interesting.
One of the things I saved were old Madision Hardware ads.

 

Recently, I finally recycled 60+ years of Model Railroader magazines. The DVD archive that replaced them is a lot easier to store!

 

Eventually, I will do the same for the earlier OGR issues,  and also for CTT when that one becomes available.

 

I like to have a paper magazine in my hands for the first several readings, but actually have come to prefer a searchable archive disk for long term keeping.

 

Like C W, I'm also a fan of the old ads (especially Madison). Luckily, the archive disks contain everything just as in the original magazine including all the ads.

 

Jim

After I finish reading them, they get distributed to one of three "libraries" in my house. After spending several months there, I cut out articles that interest me or that I know I'll want for future reference and put them in clear sleeves in a binder. Whats left goes to the recycling bin for the G-man. It's all part of the great circle of life for a train mag. Andy J.

I recycled all my magazines that were not the original Model Builder. The mass production of todays mags reduces the chance that any will be worth money in my lifetime. As far as history and knowledge, the format of the industry is too weighted with magic layouts and collections.

Usually keep them about two months and then they go to the recycling bin. At times in the past I have dropped them off in various medical offices to see if they last as long as some of their subscriptions that have been there a couple of years.

I used to save magazines and was accumulating a bunch.  One day I realized that I never looked at them, and if the stack continued to grow I never would have the time if I wanted to.  So out they went.  Now I also treat them like newspapers and into the recycling bin after I read them.  If there is something I feel I want to keep for reference, for example some article on how to repair an accessory, I cut it out and just save the article.  If nothing else you would think those stacks of magazines would be a fire hazard.

I keep only one issue of OGR at a time. When a new issue arrives, I give the old issue to a friend who models in On3. If there is an article I want to keep, I tear it out and put it into a loose leaf binder.

 

By the way, OGR is the only O-gauge magazine I consider worthwhile for someone like me who has a roster that's 99% MTH Rail King. CTT is way too Lionel biased, and collector oriented for my taste.

This is pretty much how I feel.  I don't have 60 years but they do take up substantial shelf (and box) space that I wouldn't mind having back.  There are really only a couple of things holding me back.  One is the cost coupled with my limited budget.  There are too many train items ahead of the DVDs on my list.

 

The other issue for me is that the DVD archive is always obsolete.  Each time a new issue comes out you still need a separate paper or electronic copy of the magazine and the index gets more and more out of date.  I'm not saying the archive isn't a great thing to have, I'm just thinking that it would be more 21st century to have it always up to date (provided you had a current subscription). 

I gave 22 years of OGR to one of our club members. I took about 10 years worth of MR to a TTOS train show and left them on the flyer table. I marked all the MRs as free so some greedy sole would not grab and try to sell them. I didn't mind giving them away because I knew those that got them would enjoy the mags.

I keep them just until the next issue arrives.  Then, the articles of lasting interest get cut out and the cover of the magazine is used as a folder for them.  The rest is recycled.  On the very rare occasion that nothing gets saved, the issue has gone to a waiting room, hoping that it may hook someone else. 

I just organized all mine in magazine holders. While I was doing it, I leafed through them and noted articles, photos, or ideas that I wanted to followup on or refer back to. I wrote the notes in a three-ring binder by category: Buildings, Scenery, and etc.

 

Now when I am looking for a favorite article, I can look in the binder for the issue and page numbers and go right to it.

 

CCT, OGR, and MR are my favorites, but I also have Trains. The building plans and how-to articles in Model Railroader are fantastic.

 

I eventually plan to do the same as Jim and get the disks though. Being able to use the search feature has to be a huge plus.

 

Art

I've got a couple of boxes worth of WWII Life magazines.  They're not really worth that much due to supply and demand on eBay.  I think that the best value would be to do what I read above and put them in my waiting room a couple at a time and just let people have them.

Alan

I had so many magazines I just trashed them. No recycling here so to the dump they went.

Looking at the old advertisements is good fun. In addition to Madison Hardware, many fans in the New York City Metropolitan Area will probably also remember America's Hobby Center which was located in the 20s on the West Side. AHC placed a two page spread in every issue of Model Railroader for decades.

 

Bob 

How long do I keep old magazines?  Too long.  I actually got to thinking about this over the past weekend and decided it was time to recycle most of my old train mags.  Like a few have suggested, I'll likely keep a few that mean something to me and the rest go into the recycling bin.

 

Curt

I'm going digital. I gave away old mags. I emptied about 25 storage containers.

 

Mark

Too long. That's the primary reason I went to OGR in digital format, and plan to buy the digital archive volumes. I'm even thinking about buying "that other magazine's" digital archive since it goes back to the 1940's -- before the rise of the dreaded H.O Empire when O scale was the scale of choice.

Tom, some years back I had a large bookcase filled with all my train mags until I asked myself why I was hanging on to all of them. When I couldn't come up with a clear-cut answer I took them all to the recycle center. Now I give them and extra catalogs to either my grandson, an old buddy I found on Facebook who loves trains, or my wife's doctors office and stick 'em in the magazine racks. People there for chemo or followups can also use the joy toy trains bring.

 

Tony Sincius

TCA# 97-45101

After deciding my old mags were taking up too much space but not wanting to throw away usefull information I tore them all up, saving just the articles I might refer to again. I filed them by catagory and they now take up a fraction of the original space, and the info is easier to find.

I started to clip the articles that I wanted from all my train magazines, both HO & O. I put them in manila files by category so I can easily look them up later. I have not gone through my older issues of CTT or OGR magazines since I have decided to keep these intact for now. I also will keep my Diesel Era and Vintage Rails magazines intact as well. Current subscriptions may be kept or clipped, depending on the articles. 

 

I recently just started subscribing to the OGR magazine and am looking forward to getting them regularly. There are certain magazines I collect and keep. I haven't quite figured out what for though. 

 

If anyone who recycles their train magazines and would be interested in sending them to my school so I could share them in my classroom, it would be very much appreciated. Some of you may have seen on the forum the train layout that we built in my classroom last school year (thanks to the forum members who donated items). I would love to be able to share these magazines with the kids in the classroom as well.  

I keep them all.  I have OGR back to where it was O Scale Railroading and Classic Toy Trains from the first issue. Also have some Model Railroading.

 

My interest is 50's toy trains and find the older issues of the 80's, 90's and 2000's have more articles I like.  I am not into command control and the latest electronics.

 

I have not subscribed for the last few years and miss getting the new issue in the mail but have lots of older issues to revisit.  I have lots of attic storage.

 

Charlie