old mag's

i have of late, been buying alot of old magazines, hot rod, car craft, popular hot rodding and such of the 60's. it became apparent to me that each one of them covered cars a differnet way. today, these ones seem to cover nothing but muscle cars but back then they covered alot of traditional rod n race type cars. granted they didn't have muscle cars back then but there were other types of cars on the road. i also thought which ones i liked the best. which ones were/are your favorites and why?

 

i am just curious why no one has replied. i must not be cool enough to be in the clique. i know you guys must read them.

 

I buy and sell a lot of magazines and I like them all no preference.
I like em all.

 

Probably because if you do a search, there have been many posts on this.

 

i did a search and didn't find anything like this. maybe you should search and see if you can find any, i didn't. if another post bothers you, then don't reply.

 

I have an extensive magazine collection, and find that in the last few years, I have only been keeping the magazines from the 50's and 60's, and throwing out the rest. It has a lot to do with my interest in 50's style rods, and I use those early magazines to research how they were made - information that I use in my current build, a 33 Ford five window coupe, channelled body, with 53 Cadillac motor and 39 Ford trans.

 

A word of CAUTION!
This kind of at***ude doesn't make friends around here.

I entered this thread just to see if someone had a "stash" of "old mag's" they were willing to part with.

But ... I find this.

 

Why do the mags today ****? It's the changed revenue model. Take Hot Rod (please -- as Henny Youngman would say):

--In the old days, most sales were single issues via the news stand. Therefore, the editorial material had to be compelling to get someone to pick it up, thumb through it and plunk down his quarter to buy it in 1957.

--And if you wanted to subscribe in 1957, one year cost $3.00 (12x$0.25). There was no discount for subscribing.

--Therefore, in the old days the magazine lived and died every month on its editorial material and that kept the bar raised high.

--Today, you'll pay $5.99 to buy Hot Rod from the stand, but you can get a two year subscription for $18, which is an 87% discount and they'll throw in a FREE CAP!

--So, most people will subscribe on the rationale that, "if I find something worthwhile in 4 issues out of 24 I'll come out ahead." Don't think the editorial crew doesn't know this. You can tell by reading. For long periods in the 90's and early this century it was very obvious becaused it ****ed the worst then.

--So, if you're not trying to please readers on a monthly basis, who are you serving? Simple, the advertisers. In fact, most magazines exist today simply "as a vehicle to present advertising."

--For example, the July, 1957, "Hot Rod" had 76 pages. Only 6 pages were full-page ads (8%) and another 12 pages (16%) were made up of many small-space ads, for a total of 23% ad space.

--The December, 2007, "Hot Rod" has 156 pages. The first 5 pages are full-page ads, and the magazine contains a total of 32 full-page ads by single advertisers (21%) and an additional 13 full pages of ads in which more than one advertiser buys space (8%). So, overall 29% of pages are filled with ads, including those for such unrelated products as soup, jeans, jewelry and "male enhancement" products.

--I'll agree that you get more content today for a not too awful % increase in ads, but it is more focused on highlighting the advertisers' products than on the "how to" stuff and more car features that make those old issues so much more enjoyable.

That's just one guy's distorted opinion. I got tired of subscribing to several mags on the old theory that "just a couple of good ones" will make it pay off. So long, Car Craft, Popular Hot Rodding, etc. I kinda' like the new Hot Rod look and content, but believe it only happened when people there woke up to what was happening here on this board.

 

I sub scribe to 3 mags. To keep my collection up I buy last years issues of the other mags on the bay.

 

Goober, you got it right about the advertising. If you went through a current copy of say, Street Rodder, I think you would find that close to two-thirds of the actual content is advertising. So we are paying just to look at ads.

 

I just got into buying old magazines recently. My brother got me started - he has a huge collection of pretty much every car magazine you can imagine. My personal favorite is Super Stock and Drag Illustrated. I have the full set of 1965 issues as well as half of 1966 (remember, I just started). Like ss34coupe posted above, I use them for research. I want my car to be as period-authentic as possible and like to look back at how things were done back in the day. I love all the vintage racing pictures and get a kick out of looking at all the old speed equipment ads.

 

Very good point. Now I have a goal for tomorrow. Im going to take the adds out of S/R and I will get back to you.