Comments on: Crushed under the weight of good living

Question: Crushed under the weight of good living

jadepearl — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:18:11 -0800

More than a decade's worth of Saveur magazines. What to do?

I want to reclaim a whole shelf of my cookbook cases. I have several years worth of Saveur magazines. These magazines are approaching the density of a National Geographic horde. Now that Saveur is online (about damn time they got a decent site) what should I do with these magazines?

No public library wants them (I checked). I started getting Saveur in its second year of publication and have a pretty complete run except that time I was out of country and my subscription paused.

Help me be tidy and non-polluting!

By: vers

vers — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:21:14 -0800

Freecycle or Craigslist -- offer them free for the pickup, and they'll likely be gone very quickly.

By: HeyAllie

HeyAllie — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:21:59 -0800

This is what recycling is for.

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:24:27 -0800

Came here to mention Freecycle as well. Remember, (1) Reduce, (2) Reuse, (3) Recycle.

By: jadepearl

jadepearl — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:26:46 -0800

I should ask, are these things worth money? Because I got burned on freecycle when I gave away children's clothing. I found out that they all got resold even after winnowing down requests for people in "need."

By: amanda

amanda — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:30:23 -0800

I try not to judge what people on freecycle are doing. Hey, they have families to feed, too, you know?

There may be issues there that are worth money but how much is your time worth? If you really want to make money out of this then do ebay. Do lots at a time and sell them for auction. So, the entire year of 1998! Etc. Maybe you'll make fifty bucks out of the endeavor.

By: fiercecupcake

fiercecupcake — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:32:24 -0800

Well, the thing about Freecycle is you just have to want things gone. You can't necessarily control what happens to them beyond that.

Looks like in 2007 someone was selling sixty of them for 40 bucks on CL, so you're probably not going to make a killing. Maybe them going to a good home (or even being resold piecemeal by someone with more spare time than you) rather than you recycling them is enough?

By: needled

needled — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:34:59 -0800

This thread on Chowhound indicates they may be worth some money, and more than $50.

Back issues of specialist type magazines do have buyers on eBay - how much you make will depend on how much effort you are willing to put into listing and shipping the items.

By: rosa

rosa — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:58:17 -0800

They might also be of interest to schoolteachers for use in collages?

By: Ideefixe

Ideefixe — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:20:51 -0800

There are some dealers in back issues of magazines--but the shipping might make it not worth while.

By: snowjoe

snowjoe — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:24:28 -0800

My "Assistance League of Glendale" takes magazines. Donate them.

By: davey_darling

davey_darling — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:29:09 -0800

You could try to ebay them but don't underestimate what a potential pain in the ass that can be.

I think you should try to sell them on Craigslist for a week or so, then offer to give them away - as long as you can accept that somebody taking them for free might have a connection or a system set up to make money off them. Take comfort in knowing that they aren't going to the landfill.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:30:07 -0800

Ebay them for pickup only. That way you can unload them on somebody who actually values them enough to pay a nominal amount of cash. Freecycle will often just be speculators/junk hounds and some of them can be pretty awful people to deal with.

I'd love to have these. I use the web for recipes but I love browsing through recipe mags. Somebody out there will want them as well.

By: HotToddy

HotToddy — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:00:10 -0800

One thing to consider is that just because the recipes are available online for free now doesn't mean they won't disappear behind a paywall in the future. Sounds like your primary motivation is freeing up the shelf, but just thought I'd mention it.

By: gillyflower

gillyflower — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 11:21:28 -0800

I agree with HotToddy, and would also like to point out that magazines are making all kinds of weird decisions in today's "it's all on the Internet" changing publishing culture. They might be doing great now, but who's to say that next year, or in five years, they don't take all the recipes off of their site because some new social networking site has a special deal where they can sell them all one-by-one through their site? Or maybe their web person leaves and the successor mismanages things so badly that none of the links work on the site anymore? Or maybe they just plain go under and their website disappears. (I'm a librarian and have seen this happen over...and...over...) You can't even be sure magazines like this will be archived at a large university's Domestic Sciences library, or that you'll be lucky enough to live near one that does.

If you need the shelf space, go for it, but Saveur is my favorite magazine and I'm keeping mine!

By: fifilaru

fifilaru — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 19:06:39 -0800

If you want to just get rid of them, see if your area has a Friends of the Library that would be interested in selling them.