Scanners in EU/UK?

[JonaxC]

Hi, thanks for running such a great resource. 

For years I've been carrying around hundreds of UK magazines in long-term storage, hoping to eventually find a place to preserve them. For various reasons, I'd like to donate them to Retromags with the hopes the issues will get digitalised in due time for others to enjoy (or at least that they'd avoid the shredder before that can happen). The catch? Myself and the magazines are in the UK. 

To figure out a plan, I was wondering if the site had anyone scanning in Europe or the UK - I've no qualm sending issues to any interested scanners in US or Canada, but considering the number & weight involved these may end up costing a pretty penny to mail. Scanning myself is an idea, but I don't feel anywhere near confident enough in doing what would essentially be a one-chance process (given debinding etc) without cocking it up.

In the cache are over 350 issues from Edge UK, PC Gamer UK & GamesMaster, covering various ranges from 1996 to 2015. To provide a better idea in an easy view, I've dumped the inventory into a Google Sheet, checking each issue's status in the database along the way. 

Magazine Inventory [Google Docs]

Hope this may be of interest, and cheers for any guidance. 

 

P.S. Not sure if anyone's mentioned it before, but I did look through the FAQ on donating magazines before. However, the relevant sections mentions "Check out this page on how to donate magazines!" but lacks a link to follow-on to. 

[Areala]

@E-Day or @dablais, I know you aren't in the UK, but are you interested in helping this cache find a home here?

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

  On 4/7/2025 at 8:56 PM, JonaxC said:

In the cache are over 350 issues from Edge UK, PC Gamer UK & GamesMaster, covering various ranges from 1996 to 2015. To provide a better idea in an easy view, I've dumped the inventory into a Google Sheet, checking each issue's status in the database along the way. 

Magazine Inventory [Google Docs]

 

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I'm not sure if your goal is specifically to get these preserved, or to get them preserved at Retromags.  But Oldgamemags is the place to be if you're looking for UK mags/scanners.  Many of the mags you have are already available there (they have WAY more mags than Retromags, particularly UK ones), but I'm sure you could easily get the rest of them scanned.  Dunno if he's willing to take on EVEN MORE donations, but @Gregorick lives in the UK and has scanned over 600 mags for OGM.  And Kiwi, the owner of the site who lives in New Zealand, has been known in the past to help get mags shipped from the UK to either himself or to Jason (who lives in Australia) to get them scanned. 

So those are also possibilities if having them hosted specifically at Retromags isn't a priority.  You might even be able to arrange it in advance to have permission to post the scans in both places (for example, I usually scan and edit my own mags, releasing them at Retromags, Oldgamemags, and Archive.  But I had some UK Star Trek mags which were too big to fit in my A4 scanner, so I shipped them to Jason in Australia - he scanned them, I edited them, and I release them at all 3 sites as usual.)

That brings up another VERY IMPORTANT point, btw.  Many UK mags are oversized and can only be scanned on an A3 scanner.  These are usually significantly more expensive than A4 scanners, which is why so few people own A3-capable scanners.  With a good many of the mags in your collection likely being oversized, whatever you do, you MUST make sure that whoever you send your mags to owns an A3 scanner.

[Gregorick]

Cheers for the shout @kitsunebi. Yeah I am UK based (for now, will be heading off permanently to New Zealand in August) but as mentioned above most of those magazines in your inventory have already been scanned and hosted over on OGM where my scans are. Although you may end up seeing some of my scans here at Retromags soon...

Looking through your list and the only issues I cant find any trace of are GamesMaster 124 and PC Gamer 207 and 209 (Please feel free to correct me if wrong anyone). For the PC Gamer issues, I believe both of them should be available somewhere as a digital issue but I can't find them at all so may require scanning. If they are available as digital issues it would be very early into PC Gamers digital run and they are very low quality so a scan might actually be better.

I am happy to receive and scan those three (A3 scanner over here!) if you wished to donate them. Just send me a DM for my details if you wish to do this and I will happily put them up here on Retromags. I would say I can take the lot to scan and add them to Retromags but I have a pretty big backlog to get through before I move so trying not to take on too many massive jobs! Anyway, hope that helps!

[dablais]

  On 4/8/2025 at 12:30 AM, Areala said:

@E-Day or @dablais, I know you aren't in the UK, but are you interested in helping this cache find a home here?

*huggles*
Areala

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I do have 11x17 flatbed scanner.  So I can accommodate to scan larger magazines including UK one without any problem.  It just take more times but it gets the job done.

[JonaxC]

Thanks for the information, everyone. This has all confirmed it was a good idea to bring up the collection here first. And for me to not to try jumping head-first into scanning with the various intricaries (e.g. difference in page sizes, find a scanner to fit etc). 

I had no idea of OldGameMags before this thread, so that's a pleasant surprise. At a glance it looks like they're covered for the Edge & GamesMaster issues, but lack a lot of the PC Gamer UK ones. I'll register over there and reach out to Kiwi if I can to see whether the missing ones would be of interest. 

Knowing of OGM actually gives me relief - I was worried for these issues to end up in a shredder without a copy being preserved (similar to old BBC tapes), but also worried for them to end up on a shelf somewhere to not see the light of day again. It's why the VG History Foundation didn't seem like a fit initially - The website mentions it's the second copy of an issue that gets scanned, and I suspect the probability of them receiving a duplicate of these various UK issues may be low.

As such, it seems like my best bet will be to check OGM for any missing issues that can be donated, see if anyone else may want any physical copies I have of the ones already scanned (e.g. the Foundation, the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, Retro Collective etc), and then get rid of what remains.

@Gregorick I'll send a DM separate to sort out sending the three issues you mentioned. If there's any more on the list you want to claim though, feel free to ask - Same goes with @kitsunebi & @dablais.

[dablais]

Thanks JonaxC!

That great!  Also for your information I also provided PC Gamer UK Issue 32 to 79 to @E-Day where those where donated to me.  All of them have been scanned and are awaiting to be edited.  I know they will show up at some point.

If @Gregorick start posting some of his scans here that would be awesome as well!

Thanks for reaching out!  
 

Let hope we could fill some hole with what you have.  

Danny

[Gregorick]

  On 4/8/2025 at 3:58 PM, dablais said:

If @Gregorick start posting some of his scans here that would be awesome as well!

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Soon...

 

 

....hopefully 

[dablais]

[kitsunebi]

  On 4/8/2025 at 2:31 PM, JonaxC said:

I had no idea of OldGameMags before this thread, so that's a pleasant surprise. At a glance it looks like they're covered for the Edge & GamesMaster issues, but lack a lot of the PC Gamer UK ones. I'll register over there and reach out to Kiwi if I can to see whether the missing ones would be of interest.

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I think you may not have looked in the right place at OGMs downloads.  They actually already have every single issue of PC Gamer UK from 1-206 available to download.  (In truth, Kiwi has every single issue up to the most current one already archived, but issues newer than 206 have yet to be made available to regular members.)

Sorry, I didn't look carefully at your list before commenting earlier, but it may indeed be the case that the 3 issues Gregorick mentioned are the only ones not already scanned at OGM.  Hey, didn't I say they have a lot more scans than Retromags?

Edited April 8 by kitsunebi

[JonaxC]

  On 4/8/2025 at 10:58 PM, kitsunebi said:

I think you may not have looked in the right place at OGMs downloads.  They actually already have every single issue of PC Gamer UK from 1-206 available to download.

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Yep, was saving that for until another post, but that was a mistake on my end.

I realised a couple hours ago that when I saw only 13 issues, it was for PC Games (UK) rather than PC Gamer (UK). On the plus side...a lot less issues to worry about sending now.

[JonaxC]

Heya, just wanted to give an update as things have been going on in the background. 

The issues mentioned earlier are currently on their way to @Gregorick as we speak - I leave them in the care of much more capable hands.

As for the rest of the issues that've already been scanned - There's not much point scanning them again, but at the same time it seems like a waste to just throw the copies I have out. That's why I've been reaching out to a few organisations that may be interested in them instead. If everything goes well, they will be going to a deserving institution in the UK - I'll provide more news when that's confirmed.

[slider1983]

  On 4/10/2025 at 5:35 PM, JonaxC said:

As for the rest of the issues that've already been scanned - There's not much point scanning them again, but at the same time it seems like a waste to just throw the copies I have out. That's why I've been reaching out to a few organisations that may be interested in them instead. If everything goes well, they will be going to a deserving institution in the UK - I'll provide more news when that's confirmed.

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I've been in possession of a large number of GamesMaster mags which I have been slowly going through scanning and uploading to OldGameMags. Some of those existing scans by others there could have been better so that's also been an excuse to go through issues others have scanned to improve them, If I can I will try and provide my scans for this website.

[dablais]

  On 4/22/2025 at 2:47 PM, slider1983 said:

I've been in possession of a large number of GamesMaster mags which I have been slowly going through scanning and uploading to OldGameMags. Some of those existing scans by others there could have been better so that's also been an excuse to go through issues others have scanned to improve them, If I can I will try and provide my scans for this website.

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Thanks slider1983!