How do you keep all your magazines?

[mmcporter]

Like many of you, I have a huge collection of car magazines spanning many decades. I'm wondering if any of you have come up with an innovative way to store and access your magazines. My lovely wife isn't quite as excited or tolerant of the inevitable clutter created by these magazines. I've resorted to stashing them in Rubbermaid tubs in the attic for now. Any ideas?

Happy new year to everyone.

Best,

[SS427]

I keep my 2000-3000 plus in those clear plastic totes. They hold about 200 each if I recall and keeps them nice and dry and square.
Rick

[tom406]

I'm starting to question "WHY DO I KEEP ALL MY MAGAZINES". I know they're a resource and have helped me gain much of my knowledge, but I feel a purge coming on. I sometimes stare at the boxes and realize that I haven't consulted a May '85 Car Craft or June '92 Street Rodder in the last 10 years and likely never will.

I don't take this lightly. I've kept almost all of my car magazines since my first issue of HOT ROD given to me at age 6 by my postman grandfather in 1975. It was an undeliverable copy (label fell off). I still have it. But as my stuff competes for space with my now 3 kids and their stuff, I'm starting to re-evaluate. This was almost taken care of back in the early 90's when I was storing them in my Grandfather's attic while I was in college and his house was struck by lightning(!). The resulting fire was quickly broght under control, and the magazines survived and followed me to Seattle and to the boxes in my house.

I guess I've been through this before. 10 years ago I decimated my small collection of Playboys. All the while my inner 12 year old was screaming "You moron! Those are full of beautiful women! Do you know how many years we dreamed of having a box of magazines like that!" I tried to tell him that I had a real girl now, but he was too distraught to listen........

As for the actual storage, I like the plastic sleeve/cases packed tightly to keep things square. Tall shelves bolted to the wall to let you stack them vertically, without having to unpack 1000 magazines to get to the one you want.

[CamarosRus]

Not an interesting point to you magazine collectors......But I am considering removing specific articles that I want to keep and placing them in three ring binders with some kind of index or table of contents for future reference..........

[firstgenaddict]

I have been thinking about scanning and then creating PDFs of the whole magazine... I have started with one or two... but damn is it time consuming.

[Dave Rifkin]

I keep them in a large box up in the attic. I refuse to throw them out since I did that a few times and wish I had never done that. I had an original Motion Performance catalog that I threw out among other great old car magazines that had ads and write ups for some really special cars. I kick myself everytime I think about it.

[Verne_Frantz]

Today, most of my magazine storage looks something like this. I bought what's called "Bankers Boxes". I put labels on them all with date spreads in come cases. I vacuum them off from time to time. I like the fact that I can get to them whenever I need them.


Starting in around '67, I set up an old Royal manual typewriter and got some 3x5 index cards and a used metal box. I sat down and went through every magazine I had at the time (and continued sitting for the next few years) and made a library of all the interesting cars that were featured.



It's funny, but with today's computer capabilities, I don't think I'd take on a project like that again. It just seemed ok at the time.

Verne

[PeteLeathersac]

Looks nice Verne but try and beat my method of scattering them around the home office, all three washrooms and the garage! . Keeping the bulk of them in deep boxes helps me weed out the unimportant searches too, but when I really need the item I'm after...surprisingly I can usually come up with what I'm looking for!? .

Why does it always seem that any mag you may reach for, no matter if you haven't seen it in a decade or more, you can almost always usually remember exactly what's on the next page...just try and remember to pick up milk on the way home though? .


~ Pete

PS - Verne...that fancy little example card there, how 'bout letting us see the '68 427/430 mag...is it an L88 in a Camaro? .

[six-corners]

Do any of you other guys buy old car magazines if you find a good deal on one, even though you might already have several copies of that issue? I was just talking to a friend yesterday and we have no good answer why we do that---several times over.

[SS427]

[ QUOTE ]
Do any of you other guys buy old car magazines if you find a good deal on one, even though you might already have several copies of that issue?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.......I buy dozens of duplicates when offered to me as a package. I get the ones I was missing and usually give other sYc members the duplicates when they are looking for one.
Rick