WELCOME Hello and welcome to the first issue of Random Issues. I thank you for A) finding my web site, collecting-old-magazines.com , as it's only a few months old; and B) taking the trouble and the trust to sign-up to a brand new newsletter. I hope you find it entertaining.

ABOUT ME Briefly, my name is Cliff Aliperti and I run collecting-old-magazines.com. If you're not familiar with me here's the short version of who I am. I have always either collected or dealt with vintage magazines in one form or another. Back before there was an internet I was a baseball card and sports memorabilia dealer. After that I worked a "real" job in publishing for a few years, and that's where I taught myself how to use a computer and how to sell on eBay.

My eBay ID is things-and-other-stuff. I began selling mostly sports collectibles on eBay in early 2000, but soon realized that that was far too competitive a market to break into--at least to break into full time. From the moment I made my first online sale I began to dream of leaving the real job behind. I accidentally became involved with vintage movie collectibles and saw an opening to expand that niche. I have a large informative site called things-and-other-stuff.com which covers vintage movie collectibles and stars.

I came to love dealing with movie collectibles, but as time passed that market became pretty tight to work in as well. Finally, this past summer, I decided a change was in order. I thought long and hard about what other collectibles I both knew and loved and found the answer in magazines. Selling old magazines would allow me to touch upon the world of sports, movies, history (my college major) and literature (my off-line passion). It also had the benefit of being an area that I was already was familiar with, of which I had some pre-existing stock, and which seemed easy enough to buy if I knew what I was doing.

I held clearance auctions for a month on my movies goods and bought up old magazines with the money I made. I tried to buy carefully, using the "3 C's" as a guideline: 1. condition; 2. covers; and 3. content. So far, so good! I believe I've quickly built up an impressive stock of (mostly) 20th Century publications, many of which are available for immediate sale in my eBay Store, recently renamed Collecting Old Magazines .

WHAT'S UP This newsletter is attached to the Collecting-Old-Magazines web site that I started a few months ago. I've put a lot of time into the creation of this site, but already as I glance at the home page I feel a need to revise my mission statement. Thus far the pages I've created have been mostly histories of various publications with some comments sprinkled in about their collectibility. That's fine, and hopefully you find those articles as interesting to read as I do to contemplate, research and write.

While I'll continue adding these publication profiles to the site, what I'd like to do a little more of is compose pages about my journey in this hobby. I often buy magazines in bulk, and if you've done so you know how much fun it can be to sort through them and mine out the gems. In the future of this site I'd like to find a way to express that experience more clearly--my goal for this web site is to create a valuable source of information, but to also personalize it in a way that no other site can do. I believe that this newsletter is the first step in the right direction.

After all of the note-taking and planning put into both the site and the newsletter, I once again soon came to realize that it's fun to break the rules. I don't know how soon you signed up to receive this, but if it was early enough you may have noticed that the original title was simply Collecting Old Magazines in the 21st Century. Within a couple of weeks that became more of a sub-title and this as of then unpublished newsletter became Random Issues. Why Random Issues? Because it occurred to me that it would be fun to examine a random issue in each issue of the newsletter. Thus, you'll see that Volume 1 Number 1 is dated December 29, 1941. Well, that's the date on the issue of Time that I'll be dissecting below.

SOME LINKS It's in this introduction to each issue that I'd like to go over anything interesting that has come up in my collecting/selling world since the previous issue. Since there is no "previous issue" as of yet, I thought this might be a good spot to point you to some important links. First, I'll repeat the link to the Collecting Old Magazines eBay Store . I currently have over 1,000 20th Century magazines listed there, most of it pre-1980 with a heavy emphasis on the 40's and 50's. You'll find most items described in detail and if you begin to purchase from me you'll find that I pride myself on strict and accurate grading--if a defect comes to my attention you will know about it before you buy.

Next I'd like to point you to the things-and-other-stuff weblog . I update this usually once a day and the postings include site updates (to both sites), Auction Notes (details on my latest auction listings), and some other random items. I only started this a couple of months ago, but so far I've been posting pretty regularly. RSS feeds are also available.

Finally, on collecting-old-magazines.com I have recently written a long article titled Packing and Shipping for Magazines Bought and Sold on eBay . I give examples of bad packers and good packers in this article, which I really hope does well in the search engines because, as you likely know, quite a few online sellers could benefit from some lessons in packing!

Look for a new article on the history of both the Atlantic and Harper's Monthly by the weekend...I've been taking notes and going through my stock all week in preparation for that. The most popular page on the site so far appears to be the Photoplay Magazine Checklist and I will be updating that sometime in the next week as well.

COLLECTING In relation to packing and shipping if you don't read the article above I do want to mention that I bag all of my magazines when shipping them out. Poly bags are a necessity for storage of your collection as well, so I wanted to point you over to the fellow I buy mine from, John at The Comic Zone , on eBay. John offers a nice selection of various sized bags, dealer prices, great customer service and timely delivery. And while I'm certainly not above posting an affiliate link when appropriate, I don't get anything if you buy your bags from John. In fact he doesn't even know that I'm mentioning him, I'm just a satisfied customer trying to do him a good turn.

CUTTING COSTS For sellers, or any interested parties that have followed my complaints on the blog, I finally officially cancelled my Marketworks account today. For those who aren't familiar with Marketworks, they are a third-party site that provides both a storefront and efficient listing software for eBay. Their prices are based upon image storage and as recently as three months ago I was paying them $79.95/month for their services. I had cut this down to their $29.95/month option, but have found an even cheaper way...that was right under my nose. If your main site is your eBay store just sign-up for and download their free Turbo Lister and also sign-up for Selling Manager (which I believe is also free for eBay Store owners). Then, instead of using eBay's picture manager, I use my own web space through Godaddy.com and store my images there. Bottom line, I've slashed that $79.95/month down to $3.95/month (Godaddy fee).

AT AUCTION I'm going to post this on the blog later, but if you collect magazines for literature I've listed some amazing items on eBay tonight . First, there are seven copies of The Strand Magazine available from 1901. Each issue contains a serial entry from either H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon or Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes classic The Hound of the Baskervilles. One issue even has a Bret Harte story in addition to the Wells/Doyle piece inside. Also, I've listed a half dozen issues of Harriet Monroe's Poetry Magazine from 1916-1917. The poets included in these issues are amazing, names like Pound, Sandberg, Untermeyer, Tagore, Amy Lowell, and even some very early T.S. Eliot! Really great stuff, that's going to break my heart to mail away to the lucky winners, but, hey, that's the nature of the business.