Customer Reviews

Old Magazines: Identification & Value Guide

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I bought this book because it has nine hundred covers, printed on glossy paper, three to a page (mostly two and a half inches deep) and best of all, in color. The listing is alphabetical with the magazine title, publisher and prices relating to the life of the title. This arrangement makes for some odd visual surprises Jungle Stories (1954) is facing Kimball's Dairy Farmer (1917) or Everbody's Poultry Magazine (1916) facing Exciting Detective (1940).

The color covers are a bit of an extra for a book that is really a listing but you get a chance to see how publishers presented their newsstand wares over the last hundred years or so. All type covers from the nineteenth century change into illustrations in the first half of the twentieth century and finally into photographic covers that we see today.

How accurate the prices are I can't say but apart from first issues most titles seem to be very reasonable. So if you are going magazine hunting in shops or car-boot sales it would be useful to take this paperback as a guide before you haggle.

If you like looking at magazine covers check out these two titles, ' Front Page: Covers of the Twentieth Century' by Stephanie Duperray and Raphaele Vidaling, or the sumptuous 'Great Magazine Covers of the World' by Partica Kery, both books have hundreds of colored covers arranged in meaningful chapters and finally 'Cover Story' by Steven Heller and Loise Fili, a beautifully designed paperback showing two hundred American magazine covers from 1900 thru 1950.

Old Magazines Identification and Price Guide is written by Richard Clear and advised by David T. Alexander, two long time dealers with decades of experience in the field of collecting magazines and pulps. The first thing that stands out about this book is its attractive look. It's magazine-sized, printed in full color on thick, glossy stock. Three vintage magazine covers are printed per page and at 288 pages (NOT 224 as Amazon states In the listing) you get almost 900 color cover reproductions. To me that alone is worth the price of the book. So many very rare magazine covers are included...from popular things like Life, The Shadow, and Mad, to obscure titles like Camera Craft, Electrical Review, Gun Molls, Jolly Joker, and Peep Show.

Clear uses multiple sources to arrive at prices in the guide including surveys of dealers, computer listing, online auctions, and his own thirty plus years of experience. Pricing for long running magazines is done by span of years. For example Life Magazines from 1950 - 1959 are listed at $5 - $10 each while those from 1960- 1972 are listed at $2.50 to $5.00 each. Even with thousands of magazines listed, evidently no guide can be complete and exhaustive. As a collector of monster magazines I was a bit disappointed to see so many omitted from the pages of the book. While a few such as Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster World are included, many others are not. Fangoria, Scarlet Street, Midnight Marquee, FilmFax, and Cult Movies are all missing. Perhaps these are just too new, but that doesn't explain why older publications like Monster Parade, Castle of Frankenstein, Shriek, and Horror Monsters are also not included. Likewise, Clear includes some of Marvel Comics 1970's horror magazines such as Legion of the Monsters and Vampire Tales, but omits Dracula Lives and Tomb of Dracula.

I found the prices to be a bit inconsistent from my own experiences. Warren titles like Creepy and Eerie are way too low, particularly on the early issues which feature Frazetta covers. On the other hand, prices on Famous Monsters and Vampirella seem right on the nose so go figure...

Clear does make special notations for magazines which featured the work of notable writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Norman Rockwell and prices the magazines accordingly. Unfortunately one thing sacrificed to print all these wonderful covered was more detail about writers and artists. For example, Weird Tales which feature stories by Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft go for significantly more than others of the same period, yet Clear does not note this, nor does he mention Weird Tales covers by Margaret Brundage. Oddly though, Clear does make mention of the stories written by Robert E. Howard for Fight Magazine. These inconsistencies do make for a somewhat perplexing guide.

Still based upon the sheer number of quality covers printed and the number of titles it does include, the book does prove to be a valuable, if not complete resource for magazine collectors.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

Nothing against this publication, but it was not what I was looking for. I thought it would give the value of individual issues of specific magazines which it did for what I would consider antique magazines. However, there was very little information provided on old issues of contemporary magazines.

Just received this book on info and values of old magazines. It is exactly what I was looking for. Literally thousands of magazines featured here. What was helpful that I didn't expect was the location of each publication, beginning to end of the lifetime of the magazine, along with values. It also tells you if the publication changed names which I discover MANY old magazines did. It has all of the recognizable magazines like Sports Illustrated and national news magazines to the most obscure magazines, some of which lasted on a few publications.
If you have any interest in old magazines, get this resource. Only a person who is very serious about collecting old magazines would know 10% of this info For the rest of us, this is a perfect resource.