jpdenk

Sorry, the reading copies are long gone. Back in those days, there was no reason to hang onto an old, ragged magazine. My kids read them too, and kids aren't kind to magazines.

I also bought reading copies, so I read them all without doing any damage to the archived copies.

Thanks for the answers everyone, I appreciate them. I've played video games since the mid-1970's, and when magazines the first magazines started coming out, I put away copies of the first several issues of several titles, never read them, so they're still in really nice shape, and I was wondering what they might be worth now. I understand how a lot of it depends on luck, as it's not a huge market. If you stumble on someone who's hunting for the magazines that you have, you might get a good price, and if not, they're just keepsakes, memories from back in the old days.

I haven't signed in here in ages. I'm just wondering how prices for vintage magazines are doing? I have some high-grade, older ( from the '80's, early issues including some #1's) magazines that I'm occasionally tempted to sell, but not if prices are down. Has access to the e-versions affected prices adversely? John

Yeah, that occurred to me last night when i was going through them checking for damage. I'll have to experiment on a new magazine that isn't valuable. If I wear a pair of cotton gloves of the type used for handling old documents, or even latex gloves, and take some care, I think they can be scanned safely, as the pages are still very supple and the magazines aren't (with one exception) square-bound, so they'll lay flat without straining anything significantly. If I think it's doing damage, then I won't scan them, other than the covers. I also have some older comic books too, going back to the early 1940's, so I have some experience with handling fragile magazines, and I occasionally do a bit of photo restoration work, so I'm used to handling and scanning old, fragile documents.

Just finished going through all of my magazines, and thankfully, none of the others have damage. I suspect that the damage occurred prior to me buying the magazine. Back in those days, I felt that these magazines were going to one day be collectibles, so when a new magazine was launched, for the first few issues (sometimes more like with Electronic Games) I would buy 2 copies of each issue, one to read and one to archive, and the archive copy was handled very carefully and bagged up often without even opening it in order to have a mint copy archived, although I did go through some of them once prior to bagging. So I wouldn't necessarily have caught those damaged pages back then. My guess is that some kid decided that, for some reason, there was something on those 2 pages that they wanted, so they snuck a pair of scissors into the store and cut out the parts they wanted. The only other possibility (that I can think of) is that there was something that had to be removed from the magazine at the last second after they were printed and the publishers cut something out, but that seems pretty unlikely to me. Most likely it was some kid who didn't want to buy the magazine deciding to cut out something he wanted. Of course, it had to be the copy of Gamepro #2, the one that no one else here has, so I don't think you'll have the missing pages, currently anyway. The good thing is that I am amazed at how well my magazines have come through the years. Most of them look like they're fresh off the newsstand. John

I just took out my copy of Gamepro #2 to just see what's in it, and to my dismay, I see that page 41-42 has been cut out, looks like someone took scissors to it and sloppily removed the page. Looks like page 41 was an ad, so no big loss there, but page 42 was the first page of an article about Rastan for the Sega Master System. I know I would never have done that, so I'm suspecting that it was like that when I bought it. I guess there's a slight chance that one of my kids did it back then, doubtful though, as we never had that game for the SMS, don't know why they would have cut that page out. Edited: part of page 71 missing too, another picture cut out and took part of an article with it. Damn! Now I'm going to have to go through all the others to see if anything else has been cut out. If this is the only one, then I suspect that it was done before I bought it, but if I find more issues with stuff cut out, then it had to have been one of my kids. This issue came out in 1989 when my kids would have been 16 and 14, and I kind of think that they would have known better than to do that, especially as they were both into comic collecting at the time and knew that removing parts of pages would destroy the book's value. John

Yes, that's the one. Your top scan is #5 and the bottom one is #1. I have both of those. I'm going to be pretty busy until next week, so I doubt very seriously that I'll be able to start scanning any whole magazines before next Monday or Tuesday at the earliest, but if I get a little time before then, I will try to do some quick scans of the covers of all my magazines and upload them to a Picasa album so you can see what I have. I'll post here if/when that happens.

Well, I guess I should scan that one and contribute the scan to the collection then. And no, I'm not ready to sell any of the magazines right now, maybe some time in the future. I've held onto them for the past 27 years or so, a bit longer won't hurt. John

Sure, First, thanks for all that info and advice. Videogaming Illustrated #1-August 1982 " " #2-October 1982 " " #3-December 1982 " " #4-February 1983 " " #5-April 1983 Video Games from Pumpkin Press is one that I liked a lot back then, but I don't think they lasted too long, can't say for sure though as I don't remember when they folded. Their dates are: #1-August 1982 #2-October 1982 #3-December 1982 #4-January 1983 (you have this one) #5-February 1983 #8-May 1983 The Arcade the Video Game Magazine #1 is a weird one, as I received the first issue for free in the mail, not sure why or how, as I had never heard of it before that. I used to attend the Consumer Electronic Shows in Chicago back in those days, so maybe they got my name somehow through that. I never saw another issue of that one, so it's probably very rare. It was aimed at mature gamers, probably why it went nowhere back then as it was mostly kids playing video games in those days. I was 26 when the Atari VCS came out, so I was already older than most video game players, and I still enjoy playing games, love my XBox 360, even though it's been in for the RROD 3 times already. Thanks, John

Wow, that was a quick reply! Yes, let me know which issues you'd like scanned and I'll see what I can do. I'm unsure of what the magazines are worth, have seen some vague references suggesting that some, particularly the Electronic Games issues, are fairly expensive, so I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to fielding any offers I might receive here. Due to that, an Ebay auction may be a better option if I decide to sell anything. I see one Ebay seller who has a store specializing in gaming mags, and seems to be offering them at "Buy it now" prices mainly, but I don't know if people are actually buying at his prices. Thanks, John

I'm new here, stumbled across the site as a result of a Google search for vintage video game magazine info. I'm an old geezerly video game player going back to the days prior to the Atari VCS, had the stand-alone Pong games and the Atari Video Pinball console, but anyway, I have a small collection of magazines mainly from the early '80's: first 10 issues of Electronic Games, first 5 issues of Videogaming Illustrated, issues #1 and 2 of Gamepro, first 4 issues of Video Games and Computer Entertainment, first issue (Fall 1982) of Video Games Player, first issue of Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, first newsstand issue (vol.1 #2) of Atarians, Video Games (published by Pumpkin Press) issues # 1,2,3,4,5,8, Electronic Games version 2 from October 1992 issue #1, and the Premiere issue of Arcade the Video Game Magazine. Almost all of them were looked through once, with care, and then bagged with an acid-free backer, so most are in VF+/NM/M condition, exceptions being Electronic Games #1 and 2 which are VG/VG+. I'm considering selling them, not sure if I want to or not, but I'm hoping that I could get some advice as to what would be the best way to do that. I'm seeing mention of Ebay sales, guess that may be the best option? If I get some spare time, I'll try to scan the ones that aren't available here so that people will have access to digital versions of them, as I have a decent scanner and am well-versed in Photoshop, so if I can find the time to do the scanning and post-processing, I will. John