OT: Any value in old computer and gaming magazines

[Doug Fattic]

I'm organizing my attic space and need to get rid of stuff I'll never use. Back in the early 80's I bought and kept computer and computer game magazines. I've never looked at them since i stored them in the attic and they need to go. My 1st choice is just to put them in the trash but maybe there are collectors that really wish they had the January 1983 copy of Antic magazine. I'm perfectly happy to give them to someone that will put them on eBay or keep them for there own use. What is your advice? I'm sentimental but not enough to save these magazines.

By the way I'm keeping my old copies of Bicycling, Bike World and Bicycle Guide magazines.

[Skenry]

How many (heavy) are we talking? My son, a computer engineering major at Uni of Cincinnati collects and restores vintage computers.

[paredown]

Surprisingly, there is a fairly robust market for old PCs, especially Mac stuff. I sold a bunch of stuff from a house we cleaned out.

I got small amounts on eBay for old intact software programs as well. (Not sure about the magazines.)

We gave first crack to a contact from the local Apple users' group to look at the vintage stuff--he took the Apple II, a LISA and some other stuff and the guy's anime collection. We gave him a heavily discounted price so it was worth his while.

Whoops--thanks mhespenheide--checking my reading comprehension settings,,, :)

[mhespenheide]

By the way I'm keeping my old copies of Bicycling, Bike World and Bicycle Guide magazines.

Bicycle Guide is worth holding on to; I wish I'd kept mine.

[mhespenheide]

How many (heavy) are we talking? My son, a computer engineering major at Uni of Cincinnati collects and restores vintage computers.

I believe he's only talking about (print media) magazines, not a computer itself.

[Tony T]

I threw out my old (80”s-90’s) PC Magazine, Dr Dobbs and Bicycle Guide magazines about a year ago.

[fignon's barber]

Hold on to them. With the current developments, you may need to rebadge the magazines as toilet paper.

[unterhausen]

I kept some old Byte magazines. Probably recycle them eventually.

Speaking of old computers, i threw one out and then looked up what it sold for on ebay. $500. Well, at least I have the manual

[Doug Fattic]

Attic storage can be interesting. Next to my old magazines was my old reel to reel tape recorder I bought in 1970 while teaching in Japan. I also found my short wave radio i got in Hong Kong in 1963. I spent the money I had been saving for a 10 speed bike on that radio. That was a good choice because my dad got me the 10 speed from Western Auto that Christmas.

Nobody has been interested in the computer magazines so they are inching closer to when I take the garbage out Tuesday night.

[rzthomas]

Some of those magazines are of value to a collector or enthusiast. See the vintagecomputing subreddit for more: https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/

Maybe someone would cover the cost of shipping those old magazines so that they don't end up in a landfill.

[benb]

I doubt they will have any real value because of lack of scarcity.. the internet will make it easy to find them and some collector has been busily digitizing them and archiving them online for free in all likelihood.

Heck I have a lot of academic computer science and trade publications (reference books) and they cost an absolute fortune over the years and they are mostly worthless now too. (Books that often cost $50-100 each.)

Stuff like Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. MAC OSX internals, The famous Windows Programming series. O'Reilly books on various programming languages, frameworks, operating systems, etc, etc..

We barely even use any of these huge tomes at the office anymore. Everything is online. (And unfortunately often worse off for it, no one online takes much care to write well.). When you need to learn something in depth and really understand it the old way of reading a well written book was often superior IMO.

[Tony T]

There’s a lot online at https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?and%5B%5D=collection%3A%22computerma gazines%22