WELCOME BACK: We'll have Mary Roberts Rinehart reporting from Ypres this issue as well as a report on Jack Johnson losing the Heavyweight Championship of the World. It's the Spring of 1915 and for a nickel you can pick up a copy of The Saturday Evening Post which was really hitting its stride during this time. This was the Post's heyday under Publisher Cyrus Curtis and Editor George Horace Lorimer. This time around we'll take a look at the Post and the formula for a typical issue of the mid-teens.

AUCTIONS: It's short notice, but there are 8 or 9 issues of the Saturday Evening Post from this same time period, 1913-1915, ending on eBay Tuesday night. There are some condition issues, so be sure to read the grading notes on each carefully, but each issue is still a bargain at a $9.99 opening bid. Also later this week there are some more issues of the Post from the World War II years. Still to come are more issues of the Post from both of these periods, 1950's LOOK and LIFE, 1970-72 Sports Illustrated and some more 1960's Playboy. I have some earlier issues of the Post coming in soon too (from 1908 or so if I recall correctly) as well as some other nuggets. It will continue to be a busy listing period, and buyers let me tell you -- this is the slow period, now is the time to find the bargains! When the weather turns nice a lot of customers tend to disappear, so your competition will be lessened for the next few months. Sellers, rally with me, come on September! 

MORE AUCTIONS...PLAY BALL! I recently purchased what is more or less a complete run of The Sporting News from 1957-1959 and have begun listing them at auction, 10 per week, $9.99 minimum bid per issue. Week 1 went well, all 10 issues sold. Week 2 looks good, 8/10 have bids, those end this Thursday if you're interested. The main reason I mention this though is that in order to list the auctions I've been paging through each issue of The Sporting News and taking notes on the contents, scanning some cool cartoons, etc. Rather than just "waste" this information on one-time auctions, I decided to archive the info forever on collecting-old-magazines.com, and so the first 2 pages of what should eventually be about 15 pages are up. I think these listings help give us a feel for both the publication and the times, in this case, every little microscopic detail of my favorite sport for three years in the late 1950's. 20 issues into this examination I've already seen The Sporting News ask if Herb Score was destined to be the greatest lefty of all time...only to find his career more or less ended just a few weeks later by a Gil McDougald liner. That's just a taste, have fun reading the pages as they go up!

eBay Express: It's out, you can buy from it, I don't think I'm a fan. Really as for vintage magazines, well, we're out in the cold on this one. The format is best suited for electronics and media items -- new ones, not collectibles. The benefit for shoppers is that you can shop from the full mass of eBay sellers who qualify for eBay Express, gather your items from all of these different sellers into your basket, and then checkout and make payment for everything all at once. Of course if you pick up 4 or 5 items from 4 or 5 different sellers you may be in for a little surprise at checkout as you'll be hit with 4 or 5 shipping charges. ecommerce-guide.com had an excellent article about that little buyer snafu.

I haven't tried actually buying anything on the eBay Express site, but I did play around a little and wound up taking a look to see if any of my items were there. Since I'm mostly vintage magazines, and since there is no such category, I figured there would be nothing, but I did come across one of my vintage movie cards for sale on the site. That's all I found, one stinking $4.50 card. Tell you what, I don't think I want that card there. I took a look on eBay tonight to see if there was any way to opt out of eBay Express as a seller, but I didn't see any (maybe I missed it, it's possible, but it should be easier to find if that's the case).

Why do I lean towards opting out?

HEY, I READ BOOKS TOO! Read an excellent new release which although is not directly related to our pursuits here does contain quite a bit of relevant information and was a fun read at the same time. The book is "Flapper" by Joshua Zeitz and it is a darn good look back at the 1920's, history with the flapper as the main point of concern. I give a mini-review or really more of a summary of what's inside over on my movie site, things-and-other-stuff.com because the last third or so of the book deals with the flapper movie stars. However a good part of the middle is about Lipstick's articles for The New Yorker and there is also some mention of some of the illustrators of the period, most notably John Held Jr. The first third or so of "Flapper" is about F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, as such a title should be, which leads me to warn you -- don't expect this title to be the exceptional volume on Scott Fitzgerald or Louise Brooks, it's not. But it is an excellent breezy read (two sittings for me) that captures all that was the flapper. It pretty much summarizes the heartbeat of the decade, and so I found it relevant to this site as well as my movie site. There's a link to buy directly from Amazon.com over on the things-and-other-stuff.com summary.

CORRUPTION: Yes, I moan and groan about the big boys of the online world (but eBay, I really do love ya!), but that's not what I'm talking about here. Unfortunately I'm talking about the Photoplay Magazine Checklist on collecting-old-magazines.com. When I last went to update it I noticed that a few listings didn't appear right, then discovered it was more than a few, and then pulled the list from the site and started over. This is what happens when you try to use Excel without taking the time to learn how to use it properly! Well, I'm big on trial and error, it's how I always tend to learn, so I deleted the old file, but thankfully had a correct copy of the list printed out. So now I am typing it out again from scratch and while it is not yet complete the first two of eight total pages are back up on the site taking us through May 1930. I scratched the other lists which organized the issues by the movie star featured on the cover and by cover artist -- it made the page verrrry looong, and probably is what led to me screwing up the entire list! I apologize for any inconvenience there, but am working to get the entire list back up ... correctly.

OUR RANDOM ISSUE: Enough of the fluff, onto the meat. Okay, I think I tanked last issue, I know I didn't really care for it and it's my goal to make that be the worst of the Random Issue's. I do know what my mistake was however. I started out taking on news-magazines like TIME and Newsweek and I fell into examining the following issues the same way. Wrong. Every magazine is different, every Random Issue may need to deviate from the usual approach and tackle an issue differently. I didn't enjoy exploring The Atlantic Monthly because it didn't fit my established formula. Well, new issue, new formula. But still I say, back in time we go, to:
 

WRAP-UP: Yep, that's a wrap. I am planning to add a new history or two of publications to the site in the coming month and will certainly be adding a few more pages to the late 1950's Sporting News guide. In the meantime I'll be busy listing new issues at auction, which you can either access directly through eBay or take a look at the nightly summaries on my blog. Have a great month, and hopefully some great weather!

Source:
Cohn, Jan. Covers of the Saturday Evening Post. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.