I have a whole pile of 1930’s and 40’s era pulp fiction magazines that I bought when I was a kid. I’d read all the Tarzan books and was also raised in a Scientology household where LRH was revered, so I hoped to buy some of the original Argosy pulp fiction mags that I understood featured both these authors.
I asked at my local used bookstore if they had any such magazines and was told yes, but “If you want them, you buy the whole box.” The bookstore owner didn’t want to haul the box out of the back storage room, have me flip through them, not find what I was interested in, and then have to put them all back. I basically had to buy the whole lot sight unseen. For $15 I ended up with a giant box that had a whole bunch of Argosy magazines as well as a whole bunch of “Blue Book” (a “magazine for boys and men”.) I didn’t score the Burroughs nor the LRH that I was hoping for, but they were pretty neat nonetheless. Plus there were a couple 1910’s era magazines that I also scored, which I thought were worth the $15 just by themselves.
Despite how cool I thought these mags were, the bulk of them have languished in boxes (kept from degrading in comic book bags), for years in various basements. When my latest move was pending, I thought it was time to get rid of some of them. They didn’t move on kijji nor facebook-marketplace, but I gave a few away to people who came by the house, and have now also started sprinkling some of these around various Toronto “Little Free Libraries” in the new neighbourhood.
The aspect of these magazines that I like the best are the ads. Here are the ads from two 1936 issues and one 194x issue (both of which now live in a neighborhood little free library.)
