City Subscriptions

Duluth, MN—The Friends of the Duluth Public Library will be hosting the Nostalgic Newsstand Vintage Magazine Sale at the Main Library (520 W. Superior St.) on Saturday, May 6 from 10 am to 4 pm in the library’s Green Room.

This event is a rare opportunity for history buffs, artists, and those who are simply curious to browse many decades’ worth of popular magazines, in their well-preserved entirety. The magazines will be available for purchase at 4 magazines for $1 and bound sets for $3.

The magazines have been carefully cataloged and stored and are in good condition. In all, there are 16 titles spanning three centuries included in the sale. Cornhill Magazine, a Victorian literary magazine, reaches furthest back in time with the oldest issue dating back to 1860, the first year of its publication in London, England. There are more modern selections available as well, such as Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, Sunset Magazine, and Seventeen.

The library will continue to retain and make physical copies available of the periodicals it has offered over the years, but many periodicals—both current issues and magazine archives—are now available digitally. The magazines included in this sale are available in their entirety digitally and this factored heavily in the decision to offer them to the public. Local History Librarian, Gina Temple-Rhodes, is part of the team in charge of the project to manage the library’s periodicals. Temple-Rhodes hopes the magazine sale will not only be a fun opportunity to browse and step back in time, but that it will remind people of the variety of resources the library has to offer. “People may forget that we hold all of these historic magazines and historic materials. These magazines are like time capsules that offer a glimpse of what life was like in decades past. The beautiful covers, the ads and articles—paging through them is a trip back in time.”

Magazines included in the Nostalgic Newsstand event, with available years:

American Magazine
1906-1956

Arts and Decoration
1928-1941

Architectural Record
1907-1990

Cornhill Magazine
1860-1909

Engineering News-Record
1890-1920

English Illustrated
1890-1904

Foreign Affairs
1923-1975

Literary Digest
1899-1922

New Yorker
1939-2000

Overland Monthly
1891-1917

Redbook
1966-2000

Saturday Evening Post
1919-1978

Saturday Review
1925-1986

Seventeen
1970-2018

Sports Illustrated
1963-2000

Sunset Magazine
1913-1990