Cliff Aliperti has spent his life immersed in collectibles, buying them, examining them, selling them. In today's interview, we spoke about his collection of vintage magazines and his remarkable career as a collector.
ephemera: How did you become interested in old magazines?
Aliperti: I'd dealt in baseball cards/sports collectibles since the mid-1980's and there had always been a little run-off into titles like Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, even some issues of LIFE with sports covers. When I started selling on eBay in 2000, I quickly came to find that the margins for baseball cards weren't that great. I gravitated to movie cards/collectibles which also involved selling some movie magazines. I'm a bit of an information junkie, and I love both literature and history, so suddenly, I found myself testing out magazines. General titles like Time and the Saturday Evening Post to more obscure literary titles like Paris Review and Poetry magazine, with a little bit of everything in between. By late 2006, I found the competition strengthening in movie categories on eBay and saw a lot of the more obscure stuff, which is what I liked, selling for prices higher than I was willing to pay. I upped the ante with magazine back issues then.
ephemera: How did dealing morph into collecting?
Aliperti: Well, the dealing came before the collecting. I've pretty much been absorbed by collectibles my entire life. I was a baseball card dealer in my teens and have collected everything from stamps to comic books over the years. Basically, everything I collect has a price on it, either now or in the future, but I definitely try to buy what I like--I have the attitude that if I think something's neat then someone else will too. I've also got a pretty good nose for seeking out value, which as a dealer, I will exploit as much as I possibly can. I have a personal fondness for the big sports and movie star covers, but these are often overpriced, so I spend a lot of time hunting down what's inside a magazine--important fiction, historic articles, key bits of info that other dealers miss when they don't open an issue up to peek inside. I include as much of this "inside information" in my listings as possible and have been saving the information in files that I've begun posting online in a part of my site called the magawiki.
ephemera: What challenges or obstacles do you encounter as a collector and as a dealer? How do you overcome these challenges?
Aliperti: Well, I make a good deal of my purchases online from other dealers, so as I'd mentioned, I need to take advantage of whatever knowledge I have in order to find the gems. I'm contacted several times per week by individuals that have come across some magazine stacks and I turn down most of what's offered. Sometimes it's no good: often people have an inflated sense of value just because something is old, sometimes it's a pretty good offering at a fair price, but because of the bulk involved, it becomes cost prohibitive to ship. With online purchases condition is the challenge...a magazine can photograph pretty well, the dealer may be totally on the up and up, but there still might be a big coffee stain inside on page 59, or even photos snipped out throughout. Buying magazines sight-unseen does carry some risk.
For a time, I'd had a stack of magazines to damaged for resale, I'd planned on scouring through them to snip out the good ads for resale. When I actually sat down to do this, I found it so tedious and time-consuming that I decided the new place to stack these issues would be the garbage. So, I'm always trying to maximize a purchase to make sure as little ends up in that garbage stack as possible. Another challenge, that I touched upon already, regarding shipping, is simply the storage. I can't afford a warehouse and this is a collectible that can really reach beyond your spare room. I'll keep issues in the open until I process them (prepare a sales listing). Once processed, they are immediately bagged, sorted, and placed in the proper box so I can find them when times comes to ship them out. I don't really display any of my goods, my enjoyment really comes upon receipt, paging through them to list, and then, if something is really interesting, a later reading that causes an issue to be held out of stock for awhile.
ephemera: I understand, Cliff. I once tried clip ads and interesting articles from a lot of magazines I acquired along with a large ephemera horde.Tedious is a good word for it. I'm sure a lot of other can related, too. What are your favorite items in the collection? Do you have a crowning jewel or show stopper in your collection? If so, what is it?
Aliperti: My definition of collection may be different than yours. As a dealer with a small budget, I love turnover. Without moving some really nice stuff out I have a hard time bringing in new items. So my website, Collecting-Old-Magazines.com really serves as my "collection" in a way, because now the item is archived for me.
That said, I do have specific items I like more than others, and certainly, a checklist of items I seek out when shopping. Probably my favorite, and likely because it can often be a surprise, is fiction inside magazines with a special emphasis on authors I like. Here I'm referring to the big 20th century authors like Hemingway, Faulkner, Salinger, Nabokov, all of these writers had work which was first published inside the pages of magazines. Another area I'm partial too is pre-20th century titles, such as Harper's and the Atlantic, which can contain some amazing articles peeking back in time. A story jumps to mind on "Old" New York, which was published in the 1880's looking back to New York of the 1840's. It was a twenty page article loaded with illustrations. Great stuff!
Another item I'm partial too, that I make an effort to hunt down, is Century Magazine, bound, 1884-1885 - contained throughout three of these issues is the first published version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I don't have any in stock right now, but I've sold five or six in varying conditions over the past few years. A similar item, which I just sold, and it was the first time I had one in stock, was a bound volume of Harper's Monthly, dated June to November 1851. This one contained the first published portion of Moby Dick, titled "The Town Ho's Story." Obviously these stories can also be found in individual issues of these titles, which are a bit harder to find and, of course, command a premium. This is the kind of stuff I love though, those are a couple of the better-known examples, but it's a great feeling to open up a magazine, 19th, 20th century, no matter, and come across something you've heard of, or better yet, something universally cherished, and finding it in that first state.
ephemera: What resources do you recommend to would-be dealers and/or collectors of old magazines?
I want to give a link here because I've compiled a brief, but pretty helpful list of books. Of these, the Antique Trader Vintage Magazines Price Guide is a incredibly helpful guide which points out hundreds of key issues you might not have known about before. I think I paid $15 for it when it came out, and I made close to $100 with it within a few days of receipt. My copy is dog-eared and, of course, filled with notations of issues I've come across just as noteworthy as the ones they've already pointed out. As someone who has bought and sold several of the gems they've pointed out, I'll say that often I find the pricing a little off, in that the demand simply does not exist to the extent they'll have you believe, but more often than not they point you the right way. I'm not a big believer in "Price Guides," as I believe value can only be determined by how much an actual person is willing to actually pay, but as a "Guide" that one is tops. Can't wait for a new edition!
If you look at the book list you'll see a few titles about the history of magazines. I think these are important as they help establish a timeline for collectors and help answer some question about publishing history that you might now find laid out anywhere else. Both out of print, the Tebbel and Peterson titles can be found from use booksellers online pretty easily and affordably, they're probably the best of this type of title.
If you want to go online to search for a title, author, or more, specifically even an article subject, such as a sports or movie star, a political happening, etc., then of course, I recommend my magawiki, but also, the two sites that it was inspired by The FictionMags Index and Cornell University Library's Making of America Journal Collection. Both of those, and some similar resources can be found on my Checklists and Cover Galleries page.
For storage, I just go with BCW's line of hobby bags. I don't bother boarding them because it would not only cost me a fortune, at this point, but it would add a lot of weight to already heavy stock.
Display is tough. When I was running my newsletter, I asked readers to let me know how they displayed their collection...and nobody replied. A lot of people will only collect covers or advertising, and their solution is simple--cut it out and frame it. I cringe at the idea of cutting up vintage magazines, though I can understand it, so this isn't for me. Perhaps the storage question explains why there seems to have been a greater popularity collecting bound volumes lately. This would be several issues of a title bound together as a book--often found in library sales. Storage is the same as for a book then. I'm sure there are several collectors who get creative though, would love to hear and see some of their solutions!
ephemera: If you read the many interviews I've conducted, you're sure to find all sorts of unique tips and tricks on storage. Plus, I'm sure if anyone has an idea to share, they'll leave a comment to this post. I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas on collecting, Cliff. This has been a great interview.
Search Abebooks for the books listed in this interview.
