How to Buy or Sell — Magazines

You may not be able to sell a book by its cover, but that is probably the best way to sell an old magazine. It is often the cover illustration that brings the money for old but not rare magazines. A picture of Marilyn Monroe on a Life magazine or a Norman Rockwell illustration on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post means there is more value than expected for the magazine. There are other parts of magazines that sell well: advertisements, paper dolls, and stories by famous authors. There is a moral dilemma here. Should you cut up the magazine and destroy it forever, or is it better to try to sell the parts? The whole magazine is often worth less money than the parts, but it does take time and extra research to know how to sell the individual pages. If you are selling the whole magazine, be sure that every page is still in your magazine. Missing pages lower the value dramatically. The first issue of any magazine has a value, even if the magazine is now unknown.