Does anyone know the approximate value of uncirculated condition model railroader magazines from 1899 - 1958. full set.
mags were stolen from a client, need ballpark figure. thanks.
any help would be useful. thanks.
1899? Considering the first year MR was published is 1934, anything before that would be priceless.
Bob Hayes
[2c] that thief must have been in extremely good shape, or had all the time in the world to get away with stealing 59 years worth of magazines – that’s 708 issues [wow] (if it was published monthly). I don’t know about you (or him); but I have enough trouble carrying more than a dozen or so at a time (even if boxed or bundled).
We couldn’t even give away old copies of MR, RMC, Mainline Modeler, and other model railroading magazines, and wound up dumping them in the trash.
We had a collection going back into the 1950s at our club, with many duplicate copies. After discussing the storage space problem, we tried giving them away during two open house weekends. Overall, I think only one or two copies were taken by visitors.
No school or library would take them. We finally decided that there was no reason to keep any magazine going back more than 10 years, because:
- None of the products advertised are still available.
- Most businesses that advertised then have gone out of business.
- Advances in technology have made most procedures advertised or discussed then, obsolete.
We thought about offering them as freebies here to anyone willing to pay the postage, but realized that listing what was available, receiving payments, packaging and mailing, etc. would be more work than any club member was willing to undertake.
So they wound up being chucked into a dumpster.
Several years ago, I had to do the same with a 30-year collection of National Geographic after they released all their back issues on a set of CDs.
The short answer is: Not very much. When I got back into the hobby I bought old magazines at train shows as excellent and cheap resource material. Bundles of magazines, usually one year’s worth still go for $5.00 or so.
Bob Boudreau