Fun With Old Car Magazines

One of my first retirement projects is to sort out and organize my car magazines. Over the years I have collected thousands of publications from classic issues of Speed Age to the lastest Old Cars Weekly. Years ago I had nice book cases built by a friend to store my library, but then things slowly got out of hand. I found myself stuffing magazines in file drawers and cabinets. I have plastic bags and canvas bags stuffed with periodicals. I have cardboard boxes full of magazines that publishers handed out at the last three SEMA Shows. I have copies of Auto Trim and Restyling News, Modern Tire Dealer,Undercar Digest, Car Life, DUB, etc. I have just about anything you could imagine in car magazines.

Other folks say "throw them out" or "take them to the pulp factory," but I have been a car magazine lover since I hid Hot Rod in my math text book and read it in Miss Whitney's eighth-grade home room. If old Miss Whitney didn't get my HRM, the pulp factory won't either. 

Now that I'm working for myself, I'm trying to get my magazines oranized into 3-drawer plastic storage units that I stack on wire shelves. So far I have filled about 60 of these on seven wire shelves and I figure I might be 20 percent done at best. The magazines will be stored in my car building. They'll be a bit cold, but I don't think that will hurt them. A few bugs will get in the plastic drawers, but the alternative was stacks of magazines all over the house, and I don't think that was better.

The fun thing about this project is re-reading all those great old stories from the '50s, '60s and '70s. The sad thing is looking at the original prices of those cars and thinking how much I could make today if I could buy the same cars for those factory prices. Wow!

My magazines may not stay mint, but at least I'll be using them and enjoying them again.