Bill Myers - March 20, 2010

Here's how I quickly built a large reference library from out of print magazines, with content not available on the internet, and why you might want to do the same

For years now, print magazines, especially those for small niche hobbies, have been disappearing.

That's because print publishers can no longer afford the high cost of printing and mailing, nor can they compete with the internet for advertisers.

So they go out of business, often leaving no searchable archives of their years of print content.

And that's a real shame, because some of these niche market magazines can be a real gold mine of information, ads, and product ideas.

That's the reason I recently purchased via eBay, a collection of 120 back issues of a magazine for a hobby I'm interested in.

These particular magazines represent almost 20 years of special interest content, long out-of-print, and no longer available anywhere.

Now that I've got these magazines on hand, it gives me a huge reference library I can use when I write articles or produce videos about this particular topic.

The take-away from this is, if there is hobby you are interested in, it might be worth your while to search eBay for out-of-print magazines that covered this hobby in detail in years past.

You can often purchase these magazines for a fraction of their original cost, and may end up with a huge reference library of specialized info you can use in your own research and writings.

And in some cases, as these magazines become scarcer, they actually increase in value.

In my case, individual copies of the magazines I purchased are already selling for 3 times their original published price.

So I was quite happy to buy a complete run of all 120 back-issues for a fraction of what the individual issues currently sell for on eBay.