Magazines are a fun diversion of ephemeral publishing. They’re far more permanent than a lot of ephemera, closer to books than newspapers are, but by the magazine’s periodical nature a replacement appears on a regular basis. A lot of writers got their start in magazines, and most freelance writers consider it a coup when a magazine picks up their articles. A magazine’s longer timescale allows for more in-depth stories than a newspaper, so there’s a lot for readers to enjoy. They are usually printed in large volume, so there’s a chance they’ll survive long enough for a collector to track every issue down…if they’re lucky.

So, as you might guess, I have a few magazine collections. One can be viewed here, a collection of the Howard Binford’s Guide, a local ’sights and scene’ magazine from the Fargo area in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. As an amateur Fargo historian, these old magazines hold a treasure trove of trivial information — what movies were playing, what musicians were in town, profiles of not-so-famous locals, editorials with historical notes, photos of new buildings, long-gone buildings, and all sorts of neat info. I’ve found them at the used book stores before, but it’s a small-run magazine that started 40 years ago and ended 20 years ago. How’d I get all these in my collection?

Tip 1: Put an ad in the paper. Most classifieds have a section for ‘items wanted’, giving people a place to ask for things they want, in hopes somebody has some to get rid of. I actually used a service of the local waste disposal department that lets people put up free ads to get rid of their junk. If your community has an active Craigslist community, it might work as well, or if ads are cheap turn to the newspaper’s classifieds. I left the ad in until it expired, requesting old issues of the Guide, but via the Google Cache another Fargoan found me about a month later. She’d uncovered a box of Binford Guides when cleaning her basement, and dropped me a line: I saved them from the garbage, she got a little extra room in the basement, and now I got to fill in a bunch of spaces in my collection. It’s far from complete, but getting a bunch this way saved me time tracking down issues one-by-one.

That brings me to my collection of The Philistine, a magazine of witty lifestyle advice from the Roycrofters. It was published once “every little while,” that translates to ‘monthly.’ The first batch of these were bought by the wifey and I at a local antique shop, without knowing what they were. We were intrigued by the old advertisements and the name, and I got more interested in them the more I researched. Documenting the original set I got, I laid out their age on paper, by issue. Most of the ones I had were from around 1907, and the title page listed them as from Volume 24.

Tip 2: When collecting magazines, track volume and issue numbers to figure out what’s missing. Most serial publications identify issues by ‘volume’ and ‘issue’. How those are done varies depending on the publisher; some publishers, like comics, are always ‘volume 1′ so that the issue number never resets. Magazines often treat volume numbers as year-numbers, with each issue number corresponding to the month. Magazines intended to be compiled by volume often use sequential page-numbering (issue 1 ends at page 121, issue 2 starts at page 122), which helps put issues in order. By pulling together a few issues spanning a year or two of time, it should become clear what system a magazine uses. Another handy option is to find a library with microfilm or digital archives — it’s a quick way to see what the back-issues look like, and plan your collection accordingly. Publications changed size, format, and regularity without warning, so the last issue of a magazine may look quite different than the first.

The Philistine changed volume-number twice yearly: June and December. Using this info, I backed up chronologically, making myself a ‘checklist’ of all issues back to Volume 1, 1895. That’s a lot of space to fill in, and I doubt anybody in the area has a box in the basement they’re getting ready to throw out. So, to fill out this collection, I’ve been doing:

Tip 3: look for bound editions. Most often found on the shelves of libraries, many periodicals released bound collections of their back issues, available to their readers and lending-libraries alike. While these can be somewhat rare, getting an entire volume of a magazine for $20-$30 is easier than trying to piecemeal together a year of magazines in individual issues at $3 ea with separate shipping on all.

The Roycrofters also ran a bookbinding shop, so they were handy enough to bind their own Philistine back-issues. This makes them more widespread than a lot of other magazines, especially smaller-circulation magazines that didn’t save for posterity. I’ve bought several, but they’re mostly later-year issues like the ones I already have. As you might notice with the Binford Guides, it’s easier to find the more-recent issues, after the subscriber list grew and issues have had less time to end up in the trash. What do you do when you need to fill in specific issues, or find those rarer, older issues?

Tip 4: become obsessed. Well, you’re a collector, aren’t you? Those missing issues are like a rare action figure or limited-edition print. There’s fewer of them around, come up for sale less often, and are less available than you’d like. Watch the online auctions, search Google, dig through boxes of paper at auctions, and do whatever you can to get it. You’ll long for the days of spending $20 on a bound collection when you’re shelling out $25 for a single rare issue. I’m not to that point yet (and my pockets — and wifey — would never forgive me for spending that kind of scratch), but there will come a day when there’s three minutes left in an auction and going over budget seems like a good idea. That, there, is an obsessed magazine collector.