Sell Pictures from Old Magazines at Antiques and Collectors' Fairs and Flea Markets

It wasn't the best day I'd known at a collectors' fair.  It was raining, and cold.  Sunderland was playing at home!  All reasons to explain the absence of customers and the disgruntled looks on dealers' fees.  Mine included! 

Then I saw it - a pile of old magazines.  Relief was in sight.  Not because I could now pass the time reading about bygone events; not for a chance to mourn over yesterday's prices.  This was a chance to increase the value of my stock many times over. 

And profit I most certainly did, to the tune of over 100 times the price I paid for that day's acquisitions. 

There were early newspapers, dozens of copies of Picture Post, plenty of early Illustrated London News, and best of all, a wonderful selection of Sketch magazines, famed for the number and quality of its picture pages.  You see, it isn't just the magazines themselves that prove so profitable to an ephemera (usually early paper items) dealer's stock, but rather the things they contain.  Things like prints (cartoons, line drawings and paintings), full-page advertisements, magazine inserts, calendars, fashion plates, advertising gifts, and much, much more.

Sometimes it's the newspaper itself that adds interest and value to my stall, especially where it includes an epic headline or commemorates some major event.  Into that major event category go royal milestones (birthdays, births, marriages and deaths), industrial events (strikes, pit disasters), major war reports and scientific achievements. 

But these weren't the things I was looking for, although a very good profit can be made on these items which usually sell easily to specialist collectors, very few of whom frequent fleamarkets and collectors' fairs in the North East of England.  For fellow 'Geordies'- my customers - I had come in search of prints, advertising memorabilia, line drawings of local scenes and early events.  And I found them that day.  In profusion. 

Next came a pile of very early newspapers and a selection of insipid, highly uninviting magazines.  Until you turn to the inside pages, that is, where you might find a wealth of topographical prints, just ready to be cut out, hand-tinted and presented in cardboard mounts or framed in recycled early picture frames.  Oh yes, and with a nice fat price tag to accompany them.  My major buy in the topographic stakes came in the shape of a temptingly thick batch of newspapers, not all of them northern, but all including a superb selection of photographs, line drawings and advertisements from the North East Coast Exhibition, 1929.  Those topographical prints weren't destined for my stall.  They would go to my colleagues, two picture-framing specialists who made a very nice living from their part-time venture, selling hand-tinted prints at antiques and collectors' fairs throughout the North East and Cumbria.  Next year, they're expanding into Scotland, all because they know what prints to watch out for, how to colour them, and where to sell them. 

Another colleague specialises in advertising prints, copies of which he can easily pick up for less than a pound a time.  Sometimes much less.  Mounted in early picture frames, they sell for upwards of £10 each.  For larger examples he frequently doubles that price.  But he isn't restricted to the North East; he finds his stock sells well no matter where.  London is a popular and profitable venue.  To understand why I've mentioned him here, I'd have to divulge the profit I expect to make on the huge wad of advertising prints and page illustrations I had just bought!

Advertising inserts, calendars and other common giveaways in early magazines and newspapers are also found dotted around stalls in collectors' fairs, flea markets, sometimes up-market antique extravaganzas.  They cost literally coppers, if you know where to look.  They'll sell at many times the price you paid; many times more if you go to the time and trouble to have them framed.

For a start, look out for:

The Graphic, Picture Post, John Bull, Punch, Humorist, Illustrated London News, and my particular favourite, The Sketch.  Other popular magazines to keep an eye open for include virtually anything to do with the Beatles (okay, I know they don't qualify as antique, but they are valuable), General Strike newspapers, 'Moonwalk' headline newspapers, first and last day of issue for virtually any early publication, and anything containing features on famous and infamous subjects.