Magazines written by and for collectors fill a wide range. My experience is a great many limit their focus to price guides, appraisal tips for items, and profiles of the most obsessed among them. I admit, I read those — I’m a sucker for explanations of slight variations in paint colors and a grinning Iowan standing in front of a wall covered with John Deere green Ertl reproductions — but they lack sticking power. Every issue is about a long-lost item and a obsessed collector. There’s a superficiality, the loss of something in in the gulf between the tiniest aspects and the largest volume.

Fine Books & Collections is a fresh exception to the collecting-magazine rules. It doesn’t miss on auction prices and appraising details, but the core of article selection appears to be the love of the collection itself. The cover stories, in particular, are not about the minutiae of a valuable book. Significant space is devoted to the beauty of the books that collectors have safely stored away. One issue focused on the dustjacket art of Joseph Capek, another on classic ABC books, one further on books bound in hand-crafted silver. Voice is given to the usual collector news (”one recently sold at auction for $50,000″), but the captions and notes express the aspects collectors love about their collections.

Most collectors compile their collections for reasons other than auction value or rarity, and for this reason many collecting magazines fall short. FB&C’s article on ABC books, for example, could have displayed a photo of a collector sitting amongst his bookshelves, describing in detail the whys and hows of his collection. Instead, the article gave readers an insight into the collection itself: twenty-six of the finest examples of ABC books, organized alphabetically, of course. Sure, the Dr Seuss ABC, owned by every child whose parent sent $1 for the first 5 book-club selections, is included in the list — but how could it not be? Its place in the perfect ABC collection should not be understated. Printing the biography of yet another collector gives little insight into what collectors want to see: the collection itself. This devotion to collections also manifests itself in the Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship, a competition sponsored by FB&C which rewards the “intelligence and originality” of each entrant’s collection.

In a market where collection magazines miss their mark on what collectors do, Fine Books & Collections shows how to publish a quality magazine worth reading again — in fact, worth saving and becoming a collection itself.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 at 9:38 am and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.