How do I get rid of these Dragon magazines?

January 15, 2007 1:33 PM

A few years ago I acquired, through a weird set of circumstances, about 400 issues of Dragon magazine from the early 80s. I have no use for them at all, and am trying to figure out the best way to get rid of them (for profit).

My first instinct is eBay, but I don't really want to go through that process. I don't have much experience with eBay, and I know absolutely nothing about D&D and how the condition of the magazines should be judged.

Are there gaming stores that would buy them as a lot, or would I be getting the short end of the stick there? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

posted by brundlefly to sports, hobbies, & recreation (10 comments total)

Are you in a city that has a local Craigslist? here's a link... No fees for listing an item, etc, and tends to be pretty effective.

I'd check eBay to get an idea of their worth if possible, or find out what a gaming/comic/whatever store would sell them to you for, and price on craigslist accordingly.
posted by twiggy at 1:37 PM on January 15, 2007

Some issues of Dragon came with pack-ins-- standalone games and whatnot-- that are now remarkably valuable. If you've got any of those, you might have some money on your hands. Lucky you.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:44 PM on January 15, 2007

D&D's publisher's RPG Marketplace
I might have bought them for my son a year ago, but he has now discovered girls.
posted by Methylviolet at 1:55 PM on January 15, 2007

You could take them to an i-soldit store, and they'll sell it on eBay and give you about 60% of what it sold for. or get a friend to list them, and pay them a smaller percentage.
posted by andrewzipp at 2:06 PM on January 15, 2007

How much do you want for them? My kids are just getting into D&D.
posted by veedubya at 2:31 PM on January 15, 2007

Sell smaller items on eBay for a while. It will accomodate you with the process. You will also accumulate a reputation as a reputable seller, which will boost the price of your magazine auction, once you run it.
posted by gmarceau at 2:39 PM on January 15, 2007

some of the RPG newsgroups are still active. You could look for buyers for the lot there.
posted by GuyZero at 2:54 PM on January 15, 2007

A gaming store might buy the lot, but D&D has been updated so many times since then that the content might be a little stale to today's gamer. That and they'll probably give you ten cents on the dollar.

I like the Craigslist suggestion. There you'd have the best shot at selling them in one big lot.

Putting them on eBay a few at a time would gain you the most money, but it'd take the most work. If you go this route, spend some time looking through the completed auctions by issue number to see if there's anything particularly rare or valuable.
posted by MegoSteve at 3:25 PM on January 15, 2007

Oh, and if you're worried about evaluating condition, the big things are whether the magazine is complete (no missing pages or missing cover), whether the magazine is intact (loose pages or loose cover) or if it's wrinkled up or water damaged or otherwise unusable. I've found that if you have any doubts about your ability to honestly appraise the condition of an item, you are much better off overdescribing flaws and even making them sound worse than they are than you would be if you try to pretend like there's nothing wrong.

At the very least, you can use general descriptors as a catch-all like "Well-worn, well read, has many flaws." On some comics, I've even said, "Please look carefully at the pictures. I'm sorry, but due to the low value of these items, I cannot spend a lot of time grading their condition. They are well-read reading copies and if you expect perfection, you may be disappointed."
posted by MegoSteve at 3:35 PM on January 15, 2007

Sady, the market for Dragon issues has dissolved significantly over the last ten years with the availablity of the archive CD-ROMs and the simplicity of downloading any issue one wants (including the game inserts) via BitTorrent, DC++, and so on. Issues from the early 80s sell for about a buck a pop on EBay and $2-$3 in most other online aftermarkets.

Issues from about issues 100 through 250 are particularly inexpensive in the aftermarket because the print runs were relatively high and all are available on the aforementioned CD.

You might well make the most money selling them in multiple lots, with no duplicates in each lot (with 400 issues, I assume you have duplicates) on EBay or via rec.games.frp.marketplace. You might also try www.titangames.com, which is perhaps the largest used genre game dealer, but you'd be very lucky to get more than $0.75 a pop, I suspect, and you'd pay shipping.
posted by solid-one-love at 5:49 PM on January 15, 2007