Printed Magazine Collection Advice

Hello all, my father was a chartered mechanical engineer and held a lifetime interest in model steam trains, ships and radio controlled model aircraft. I'm an engineer too, but of the non-mechanical variety (telecoms / electronics).

Sorry to say he has passed now, but has left a vast number (100s if not more) of old printed ME magazines - I'm talking from 1940s to late1980s here. I have no room for them and looking at selling on eBay or somewhere. I've had a look there and they are not exactly rarities!

As I said looking to sell and rather they went to a good home so to speak. My Q is, is there anything I need to look out for - are there any issues / periods that are considered particularly valuable I should know about so I don't flog them off to someone unawares.

Any views welcome.

If not I'll just try the batch sale path. Thank you very much, Chris Wright (from Watford).

ME uses many/mostly multi-part articles so individual issues are generally not that valuable unless you can find someone who needs it to complete a series.

I'd sell them as a batch.

Hi Chris, if they are in complete volumes, sell them in complete volumes. Selling them in odd issues may take a long while and will probably leave you with loads of them that you may never sell. If you try and sell them as a job lot, you may also never sell them. The earlier ones are normally harder to find, but pricing can be difficult. You could try a commercial outlet to sell them to, but you won't get the same value from them that you would from a collector. The best thing on the likes of ebay, is to put them in the "bidding" rather than a "but it now" but put them in at a lowish price, as they will only fetch what someone is willing to pay.

Regards Nick.

Sadly Chris, the market for old mags has suffered thanks to tecknowleggy. A 6 foot ( 2 Mtr) pile of mags is equal to a maximum of 2 DVDs. Part of my collection of M/Es was a gift from an unknown vendor for the price of petrol to go and pick them up. Sad that many lovingly collected tombs of information end up at the local recycling centre but heaven forbid anyone that invokes the wrath of the publishers screaming the big 'C' word.

Regards Ian.

Thank you very much indeed Peter, Nick and Ian, much appreciated. Cheers.