What to do with a shedload of old(ish) UK music magazines?

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The time has come I'm afraid....!

After years and years of religiously buying NME, Melody Maker, DJ Magazine, and many now gone publications like The Face, Select, VOX, I-D, I simply have got to get rid of them. :-(

As I sometimes still love to pull out classic issues from the 1985-2002 period of my collection, I simply can't pay for the storage fees anymore.

After a month or two of advertising them here in Australia, it doesn't seem like there's much interest. Do I:

* put'em up on eBAy (though listing them all would take forever)
* start up a yahoo site
* have a funeral pyre for them
* take them to "cool" record stores
* take'em to fairs, fetes, etc
* stop whingeing and hold onto them for more years, thus maybe gaining more value for specific issues

Anyone else facing a dilemma of this magnitude, I would like to hear from you as one part of me says "no", the other says you must to simply move on with life and clear your backlog glut of music mag collecting!

― herbalizer12 (herbalizer12), Monday, 20 September 2004 08:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Dump them in the recycling bin, that's what I did eventually. These days, there is the internet if you need to look up something.

― JoB (JoB), Monday, 20 September 2004 08:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Depends on the magazine. The Face, I-d, Mojo are worth listing on ebay. Though since most of the people who'd be interested in them are Brits they would probably baulk at the postage costs from Oz.

As for the rest, I guess it depends who's on the cover. Stone Roses, Sonic Youth and Oasis are probably saleable. Kingmaker, Deacon Blue and T'Pau probably less so.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 20 September 2004 08:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I had to do this when I moved once - I ended up giving most of them to the hairdresser around the corner, and recycling the rest. Hairdressers, doctors offices, places like that, they often want back issues of magazines. Though, obviously, not 3 tonnes of the NME.

― The 120 Days Of Streatham (kate), Monday, 20 September 2004 08:43 (twenty-one years ago)

So do I take it that the consensus is that I'm not going to be able to retire on the proceeds of floging-off 10 years worth of back issues of "Q" on E-Bay after all?

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Monday, 20 September 2004 08:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe cutting articles on your favourite bands and collating them all into a portfolio and selling them like this would be preferable?

It would take weeks to do this but imagine all the Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Nirvana, Stone Roses, Blur, etc, features you'd get from 15 years worth?

Hey, why am I answering my own question here?!!!

― herbalizer12 (herbalizer12), Monday, 20 September 2004 09:04 (twenty-one years ago)

That Vintage Mag place in Soho will probably have them, they may even be prepared to pay the postage costs so that they can flog them for ridiculous prices.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Monday, 20 September 2004 09:06 (twenty-one years ago)

There's a particular issue of The Face I will pay you for. I think it's January 1997, I will check. It contains the end of year round up and I think has a naked Stella Tennant on the cover.

― Anna (Anna), Monday, 20 September 2004 10:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I've got a whole load of NMEs from about 92-96 cluttering up my parents house in Ipswich. If anyone wants them (collection only) let me know.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Monday, 20 September 2004 10:26 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah that mag place in soho (near urban outfitters?) sells the faces for like £15 each. there's a place in manchester called 'empire exchange' that sells them for £2. that's the north/south divide for you.

― piscesboy, Monday, 20 September 2004 11:29 (twenty-one years ago)

I've looked in the Manchester place, they don't have it. Someone actually had a look in the magazine's archives for me, but there weren't any stealable copies. Sad as it is, it's the only one I don't have from about 1995 to the folding date. I did have it, but it went AWOL.

― Anna (Anna), Monday, 20 September 2004 11:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Tis a bit hard from Australia! I will check to see about that Face issue, Anna, as I think I've only got sporadic issues from '95 onwards. You can have it for free if I've got it, and you can cover postage cost only: how's that sound?

― herbalizer12 (herbalizer12), Monday, 20 September 2004 11:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Like a gift from Magazine Gods. Thank you very much.

― Anna (Anna), Monday, 20 September 2004 11:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I'll buy any Morrissey covers off of you.

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 20 September 2004 12:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Magazine-lifters of the world unite!

― herbalizer12 (herbalizer12), Monday, 20 September 2004 12:43 (twenty-one years ago)

i threw out several hundred copies of the NME i'd hung onto over the years. i kept a handful: the kurt cobain cover, the ones with particular shoegaze articles in, the factory discog one, and some with manics and placebo on the cover (for they seemed to be worth something once, now i'm not so sure....) and also the first one to mention stereolab.

― the surface noise (slight return) (electricsound), Monday, 20 September 2004 12:45 (twenty-one years ago)

i remember finding the first one to mention oasis quite a while ago.. however i fear it was thrown away

― the surface noise (slight return) (electricsound), Monday, 20 September 2004 12:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Is there a marketplace for old back-issues nowdays though, since everything you can get is readily available at the touch of a couple keystrokes?

I guess the '60s/'70s periods were the epitome of music writing/critique, etc, thus making some issues more worthy, but every generation thereafter will have differing opinions to that.

― herbalizer12 (herbalizer12), Monday, 20 September 2004 12:56 (twenty-one years ago)

There is a healthy marketplace for old music mags:

Backnumbers
http://www.backnumbers.co.uk/

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Monday, 20 September 2004 12:59 (twenty-one years ago)

If you decide to dispose of them, be sure to recycle. Otherwise Mother Earth will cry.

― Wooden (Wooden), Monday, 20 September 2004 13:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually they will just get sent to clog up China instead:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1308276,00.html

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Monday, 20 September 2004 15:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Do libraries have any interest in keeping copies of these types of publication?

I too have a massive pile of NMEs at my folks house. Given that I now live on the other side of the world you'd think I'd let 'em go, but I can't. It's very very sad.

― wombatX (wombatX), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 01:44 (twenty-one years ago)

can you tear out all the toop articles from those old faces for me?

― gaz (gaz), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 02:00 (twenty-one years ago)

I know where ya' coming from Wombat! Sometimes I get the urge to go through them individually to source something but it is all too much in the end.

On reflection, I was an addict; purchasing them weekly no matter who was on the front cover or inside. I can't simply can't bring myself to just pulp them as there must be an obsessive just as I was who would be interested in maybe purchasing some?

― herbalizer12 (herbalizer12), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 13:55 (twenty-one years ago)

twelve years pass...

I'm in the midst of moving, clearing boxes, and I'm wondering what to do with all these 'The Face's, Mojo's, Q's etc from around 1995-2005. I don't have entire annual series, but about 50 loose ones.

First one I googled to see if they had any value at all was the February 2001 issue of The Face, with the iconic Daft Punk feature. It's listed on eBay twice, for 40 and 50 quid (but that's listings, not sells). It made me think I shan't bin them after all though. So two questions:

1) Echoing the thread title: how do I sell these? Is there a 'discogs' or other sort of marketplace for music mags?

2) In a broader sense: do you miss these mags? Their aesthetic and the momentum they created? I kind of do, flicking through them. There's no online equivalent of creating a buzz and 'punktum' in music and pop culture. A P4K article just isn't the same. I know this is all lol nostalgia (coming from an ink-fingered newspaper man, no less), but still. I will definitely be reading the upcoming 'The Story Of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture', a book about The Face by Paul Gorman.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 20:11 (eight years ago)

I've recently decided to get rid of all my music magazines after 2001. Seems like the era I grew up with would be far more likely to be the ones I want to revisit. And there was the small fact that buying something like Q ceased to have any worth around this point.

― PaulTMA, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 20:51 (eight years ago)

lbi u should use these magazines to make a giant papier-mâché mannequin of david quantick

― frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 20:58 (eight years ago)

lmao

I'm very bad at paper-mache-ing (spelling whatever), at doing things with my hands in general tbh. I would like to believe I could do a half-decent Quantick though. And then put that on eBay. This just might work!

― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 21:02 (eight years ago)

would the mannequin also be able to write a 4-star review of Kill Uncle and then get taken to court

― PaulTMA, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 21:05 (eight years ago)

only one way to find out - get on it lbi

― frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 21:06 (eight years ago)

In a broader sense: do you miss these mags? Their aesthetic and the momentum they created? I kind of do, flicking through them.

i do, very much so

the glimpses they provided me, at age 14 or 15, of an adult world of bands and movies and books and drugs I'd never heard of were impossibly thrilling, but i suspect they'd look rather more pedestrian to me now if i went back to an old issue of the face or whatever

like they say the golden age of sci-fi is 12, maybe the golden age of music and lifestyle journalism is 14-17, that sweet spot of excitement and impatience and anticipation just before adulthood. or it was before the internet swept all this stuff away, i dunno

― frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 21:16 (eight years ago)

would the mannequin also be able to write a 4-star review of Kill Uncle and then get taken to court

― PaulTMA, Wednesday, August 30, 2017 9:05 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This borders on the insulting: the gall to even ask such a question! Of course it would be. It takes a nation of P4F writers etc.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 21:18 (eight years ago)

Bizaro so otm. I still have that itch unscratched at times.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 21:19 (eight years ago)

I had 10+ years of Magnet magazines which I recently parted with. I put them up on Craigslist. I tried selling the whole lot at first, but after a few weeks without any response, I ended up giving them away for free instead.

― Ex Slacker, Friday, 1 September 2017 03:03 (eight years ago)

speaking as an actual literal kickstartered historian of this nonsense i half-want to say SEND THEM TO ME

speaking as someone whose entire flat is packed with junk like this, i counter that with NO DON'T

(it might be worth contacting rock's backpages to find out if you have any issues they're looking for)

― mark s, Friday, 1 September 2017 11:30 (eight years ago)

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