What To Do? Old Bass Player Magazines (long)

[Thunderthumbs73]

I am cleaning/purging/organizing. I have a ton of old Bass Player Magazines. Some date back to 1992, and I subscribed and/or bought regularly starting in 1994 until about a year and a 1/2 ago. I decided then that I needed to stop buying the magazine and adding to the existing collection in my house until the old ones were gone. Well, life happens, and I'm thinking about this again, and what to do. So I stopped buying, but the back collection is still in my home, and needs to go. This is hard (for me) to do, but must be done.

My collection of bass player is not 100% complete. I am missing some issues due to moves, life, etc... I know it's gonna cost a lot of money and time to pack up and ship to an individual or institution who want these magazines to a location where it is not otherwise practical to have someone pick up or for me to deliver.

I think my main concern is not some level of physical attachment with these magazines which I have bought, read, and loved during my bass-overloaded/crazed years early on in my formative years of playing bass. I'm over that. I think my hesitation in not immediately and without a second thought sending these to the recycle bin, is that so far as I can tell, if I throw away the magazines, I cannot easily retrieve the information contained within. Even in this day and age of internet, some information is not digitized, or captured, or available, except in hard copy. Bass Player Magazine, and it's complete contents seems to be no exception.

National Geographic has a wonderful option, which is that ALL issues can be purchased on CD for a price:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Natio...2153146&sr=1-1

Anything like this going on for Bass Player Magazine, that you know of? If so, it would be great. I personally, might pay up to $100 for a professionally digitaized/captured complete collection of every single article, picture and ad, like National Geographic has done. What is Bass Player Magainze doing on this front???? Very tempted to just email them.

While it is topical, I will mention I've not been able to find (electronically) the article (words and pics) about Mark King and Pino Palladino from the 1992 issue of Bass Player Magazine, as a perfect example of why I have so far hesitated to just throw old Bass Player Magazines away. I guess I could buy the issue off Ebay if it was ever available for sale, but I'd be adding to the (physical) problem.

Anyway...
My order of preference in how to handle the magazines:
1.) Give to a local institution or individual who wants these.
2.) Throw away.
3.) Take further time/energy to pack, prepare, ship these to someone afar due to Ebay or otherwise.

I would like to subscribe to, or purchase Bass Player again, but I'm exercizing self-control and waiting to figure out what is the right thing to do regarding the existing magazines which I already have.

Thanks for reading.

[Roy Vogt]

That's a really cool idea! I hope it happens. One of the British Bass Magazines does that.
1. Where are you located? It's possible that Anthony Wellington, who has a teaching studio in Virginia near the DC area, might be interested in them for his students. He has quite the lending library and lots of gear for students to check out.
Just a thought....
www.anthonywellington.com

[jnevi9nr]

sell them to people from TB, this accomplishes:

1. additional money for you
2. additional space in your house
3. any info in these magazines can usually be retrieved by someone on here.

there is no way to really archive the information, unlike the british one which puts each issue on disk and you can order it (which makes it easier to search, and organize your house with just CDs instead of books).

[Thunderthumbs73]

Originally Posted by Roy Vogt

That's a really cool idea! I hope it happens. One of the British Bass Magazines does that.
1. Where are you located? It's possible that Anthony Wellington, who has a teaching studio in Virginia near the DC area, might be interested in them for his students. He has quite the lending library and lots of gear for students to check out.
Just a thought....
www.anthonywellington.com

Well dang! That is a fantastic idea! And I do live in the area! Snap! And on the second response too! You rock! Been a while since I've seen you. Probably about 10 years. Thanks Roy. I'll reach out to Anthony.

[JimK]

Wow. I have every issue stashed chronologically in my music room closet. I installed a shelf (Lowe's) & they are stacked neatly in 3 piles of 1.5ft-2ft tall.
Working on pile #4...and as thin as the magazine has gotten of late...I might get another 10 years accumulation for that pile alone.
Prior to that, I had 'em stashed all over...organizing them put them onto a manageable footprint. YMMV.

FME, Bass Player's website is pretty lame for looking/searching for archival material.

[Thunderthumbs73]

Originally Posted by jnevi9nr

sell them to people from TB, this accomplishes:

1. additional money for you
2. additional space in your house
3. any info in these magazines can usually be retrieved by someone on here.

there is no way to really archive the information, unlike the british one which puts each issue on disk and you can order it (which makes it easier to search, and organize your house with just CDs instead of books).

Don't care one bit about #1, need #2, and #3 is a possibility. True. Thanks for your response!

[Ric5]

sell the collection on ebay or craigslist

[LowDown Hal]

buy a scanner ?

[Staccato]

Place an ad in the TB classifieds for local pickup, and see where it goes. These should be worth 2 or 3 hundred OBO to an interested TB'r?

[Jim Campbell]

Originally Posted by Thunderthumbs73

Don't care one bit about #1, need #2, and #3 is a possibility. True. Thanks for your response!

well i'd give them a good home,or you could donate them to the music school at your local university.....

[onlyclave]

I had a bigger collection of Bass Player magazines than that and when I moved a couple of years ago I called the Bellevue, WA. public library to see if they wanted them and they didn't want to deal with them. I thought maybe they could be bound together in volumes and put on the shelf. There were 15 complete years of magazines that I just had sitting in a box.

The library didn't want them and I get tired of storing them so I just recycled them. I don't miss a single one.

[Thunderthumbs73]

As the information contained within Bass Player Magazine is not nearly as time-sensitive as say, U.S. News & World Report, I think somehow, I have to pay it forward, and get this stuff into hands (and minds) that will appreciate it.

Twenty-something years ago, in a similar situation, a neighbor gave me 10 complete years-worth of Car and Driver, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Better than Christmas. I threw 'em out fifteen years later without the foresight to pass them on myself, in my own similar purge. This, of course, predated the internet, Ebay, Craigslist and so on...

[JTE]

I had every issue of Guitar Player from December 1972 through December 1995, and every issue of Bass Player from when it started through about 2005. I tried to sell 'em, but got no offers that were worthwhile. One person offered me a dollar a copy, but I had to pay shipping. Everyone else wanted to cherry pick them. I finally sold them to a local pawn shop (the owner's a guitarist who I knew back when I managed a guitar store and he first came to town for college decades ago). He was a fan of Rick Neilsen, and his main guitar when his band was the hot local original band was an Ibanez double cut. The first box he opened at random had the GP with Neilsen on the cover, and the inside cover had an Ibanez ad for Ed's own guitar. He was hooked.

We settled on $1/copy in store trade. Worked great for both of us.

John