The value of a newspaper… impacted by content…

April 12, 2010 by · 7 Comments 
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One of the common questions received at Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers is “What elements are involved in determining the collectible value of a newspaper?”   Several posts on this subject may be viewed at:  “Determining the Value of an Historic Newspaper“.   Two of the elements which drive the collectible value of a paper are content and age.  For example, the $0.50-$1.00 newsstand price of a Washington Post, USA Today, or Chicago Tribune with the 1st report on the election of President Obama quickly rose to $35 a month (and higher) after the event (content), and will likely be valued at many times this amount in 20+ years (age).

In contrast, we recently came across a newspaper whose value increased by more than 700% (due to content – a photo) before the end of the day of its initial printing.  Our find… the May 1, 1945 Mediterranean edition of Stars and Stripes.  The front cover printed the famous photo of Benito Mussolini shown after his execution.  In an effort to show a little discretion, the photo is not shown within this post, but may be viewed at:  http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/568477?acl=779383924

Although there have been times when the collectible value of a newspaper increased by the following day, we’d love to know of other pre-2000 events which resulted in an increase in the value of the newspaper on the same day the issue hit the newsstands.  If you know of any, feel free to share with the collectible community.

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Filed under: Common Questions, Noteworthy Issues, The 20th & 21st Centuries, Unusual, Fun & Bizarre, Valuation of Issues
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Food for thought… a little humble pie…

April 10, 2010 by · Leave a Comment 
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While looking for content on the death of General William Walker in an October 6, 1860 issue of Harper’s Weekly, I came across an interesting morsel I thought everyone might enjoy.  Just a little something to chew on (sorry):

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Filed under: Food for Thought, Pre Civil War, Unusual, Fun & Bizarre
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James Gordon Bennett and his New York Herald…

April 8, 2010 by · Leave a Comment 
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A book I am currently reading, “An Empire of Wealth” by John Steele Gordon, has a page or two concerning newspapers, mostly focused on the innovations of James Gordon Bennett (image to the left is from the Harper’s Weekly dated July 10, 1858) and his “New York Herald“, offering some insights new to me and likely new to you. It is a bit lengthy but has some interesting information I felt was worthy of sharing:

“The biggest difference between the newspapers of the pre-industrial world and those of today was politics. Most general-interest newspapers were the instruments of political factions, praising one party and excoriating all others. They were, in reality, little more than an editorial page wrapped in some highly tendentious news.
A Scots immigrant to New York, James Gordon Bennett, changed all that. Born in 1795 into one of Scotland’s few Catholic families, Bennett was always a man apart, which can be an asset for a journalist. He was also remarkably ugly, with severely crossed eyes. When a young journalist interviewed him in the 1850’s at his office across from New York’s City Hall, he reported that Bennett ‘looked at me with one eye, while he looked out at the City Hall with the other.’
Well educated in Aberdeen, he wrote his first piece of journalism about the Battle of Waterloo, when he was twenty, and four years later, sensing greater opportunity, immigrated to the United States. He worked at a series of newspapers from Boston to Charleston before settling in New York where, three times, he tried to found a newspaper that would expound Jacksonian principles. Each attempt was a failure.
Steam, however, was changing the newspaper business as it was changing everything else by the 1830’s. The new rotary presses, powered by steam, could turn out thousands of copies of a newspaper a night and at a much lower price than had been possible before. Bennett decided to try something new. On May 6, 1835, with $500 in capital, an office in a dank cellar, and himself as the only employee, Bennett began publishing the “New York Herald“.
Bennett made the Herald nonpartisan in its news articles, sought always to be the first with the news, and sold it to a mass audience by having it hawked on the streets at a penny a copy by the armies of newsboys that would quickly become a feature of the American urban scene for more than a hundred years. None of these ideas was original with Bennett. But it was he who put them all together for the first time. He also introduced a dazzling array of other journalistic innovations. He was the first to print a weather report and to cover sports regularly. He was the first to cover business news and stock prices in a general-interest newspaper. And while ‘respectable’ papers weren’t supposed to notice such things, when a beautiful prostitute was murdered in one of New York’s more fashionable brothels, Bennett played the story for all it was worth.
The “Herald’s” circulation soared, and other papers were forced to follow suit as the city, and then the country, became transfixed with the story. Within a few years the ‘Herald” was among the city’s most successful papers. Bennett traveled to Europe, where he signed up correspondents in London, Rome and Paris to supply the “Herald” with exclusive copy, the world’s first foreign correspondents. He fought Congress to establish the principle that out-of-town newspapers had as much right to the congressional press galleries as the local papers, the beginning of the Washington press corps. He even coined the use of the world ‘leak’, to refer to the stores slipped to reporters by politicians for their own purposes.
As the telegraph began to spread across the country, Bennett exploited it to the hilt. When the Mexican Was broke out, only two years after Morse’s successful demonstration, Bennett organized a consortium of newspapers to fund a pony express from New Orleans to Charleston, which was connected to New York by telegraph. The reports the New York papers published were often days ahead of the official reports arriving in Washington.
By the time of the Civil War the “Herald” was, by far, the largest and most influential newspaper in the country, and all other major papers had followed its model, profoundly transforming the newspaper business. Its daily circulation during the war reached as high as 400,000, many times the total circulation of all American newspaper combined fifty years earlier.”

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Filed under: Harper's Weekly, Pre Civil War, The Hobby
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The first newspaper in Kentucky…

April 5, 2010 by · Leave a Comment 
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The first newspaper ever published west of the Allegheny Mountains was established in Lexington, in 1787, by John Bradford. It was then called the “Kentucke Gazette“, but the final “e” of Kentucky was afterward changed to “y”, in consequence of the Virginia legislature requiring certain advertisements to be inserted in the “Kentucky Gazette“.

Go To: http://www.kentuckygazette.com/

This paper was born of the necessities of the times. The want of a government independent of Virginia was then universally felt, and the second convention that met in Danville, in 1785, to discuss that subject, resolved, “That to ensure unanimity in the opinion of the people respecting the propriety of separating the district of Kentucky from Virginia and forming a separate state government, and to give publicity to the proceedings of the convention, it is deemed essential to the interests of the country to have a printing press.”

John Bradford informed the committee that he would establish a paper if the convention would guarantee to him the public patronage. To this the convention acceded, and in 1786 Bradford sent to Philadelphia for the necessary materials. He had already received every encouragement from the citizens on Lexington, and at a meeting of the trustees in July, it was ordered “that the use of a public lot be granted to John Bradford free, on condition that he establish a printing press in Lexington; the lot to be free to him as long as the press is in town,”

At last, after many months on the route, the precious printing material arrived, and on August 18, 1787, appeared the first number of the first newspaper ever published in the then western wilderness. It was a quaint little brown thing, about the size of a half sheet of common letter paper, “subscription price 18 shillings per annum, advertisements of moderate length 3 shillings.” The first number is without a heading, and contains one advertisement, two short original articles, and the following apology from the editor:

“My customers will excuse this, my first publication, as I am much hurried to get an impression by the time appointed. A great part of the types fell into pi [disorder] in the carriage of them from Limestone (Maysville) to this office, and my partner, which is the only assistant I have, through an indisposition of the body, has been incapable of rendering the smallest assistance for ten days past.   JOHN BRADFORD.”
Source:  Much of the credit for this post goes to George W. Ranck’s  “History of Lexington, Kentucky…”

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Filed under: Collecting Newspapers, Common Questions, Noteworthy Issues, Post Civil War
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To laminate or not…

April 3, 2010 by · Leave a Comment 
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Fellow collector Morris Brill asks, “What are your thoughts of laminating newspapers?”

In a word–or three–don’t do it. Lamination is a one-way process, by which a newspaper is permanently sealed between two large pieces of plastic, heated such that the two plastic sheets bind to one another. Newspapers laminated as such cannot be retrieved without considerable damage.

Collectors typically like to touch and feel their newspapers, and if kept in a protective folder, a Mylar bag or sleeve, or even if encapsulated (similar to lamination but the only permanent binding is at the edges, beyond the margins of the newspaper) this can be done. But if laminated a newspaper cannot be returned to its unprotected state.

Now, if a newspaper is very fragile, has more of a personal, family, or sentimental attachment and there is no concern for potential collector value, then lamination might be an alternative for permanent protection.

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The Civil War…

April 1, 2010 by · Leave a Comment 
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Not too long ago we had a collector ask several questions regarding rare newspapers from the Civil War.  We thought others might be interested in the questions and responses as well.

Collector:
I recently obtained a New York Tribune issue from January 1, 1863 that had the evening edition for January 2 inside it, with the attachment remaining uncut on its superior border.Was this the way it was meant to be printed? Was this some error in printing? If this was meant to be this way, why isn’t the evening edition of the January 1 paper attached and not the January 2 edition? Is there any significance to the uncut superior border? How commonly did that happen with ordinary papers of the day?
Tim:
Yes, the N.Y. Tribune was meant to be printed that way. We’ve had hundreds of issues done that way, also done by the Phila. Inquirer and perhaps others.  I have a theory concocted from various sources years ago but no definitive explanation.

Most major city papers had a daily and bi-weekly edition, and some a tri-weekly edition. The cost of a newspaper from the pre-1890 era was no small expense, so the latter two were more affordable for many. I suspect the “Evening Edition” did not publish 7 days a week; perhaps 2 or 3, maybe 4 (?). If this was the case it was easy for them to fill in the balance of the issue with news from a day or two before as the type was already set and those who purchased it hadn’t read it. This was more clearly defined with the Phila. Inq. run we had because they had in the first column that it was the “tri-weekly” edition, and in the same issue was another masthead from the day before. The Tribune did not print such a notice, or at least I haven’t found it yet.

And such editions with 2 masthead are quite uncommon because libraries would have only subscribed to the regular daily edition, given their desire to document all news for every day, and 95% of early newspapers on the market came from some institution after microfilming. So the 2 masthead issues are typically only found as never-bound issues which have survived the years in attics, trunks, etc.

Collector:
While I understand that there is no “only one correct answer” to this question, in regard to Civil War-era newspaper collecting, which papers are the Holy Grail of collecting? Which are the rarest but most sought-after ones? Are there any that even you have never seen, any that even you have been searching for for years and have never found?
Tim:
I would say a Gettysburg Address issue in a Gettysburg newspaper would float pretty close to the top. Or even battle of Gettysburg issues from Gettysburg. All the good Lincoln assassination issues tend to turn up from time to time because they were commonly saved. The Gettys. Add. would not have been saved as it wasn’t anything special at the time. To this day we probably get more requests for both Gettysburg events than any other during the Civil War.

Collector:
Do you have a favorite title form the Civil War?
Tim:
I would say the Philadelphia Inquirer. I like that it had more graphics, many embellishments at the tops of ftpg. columns, and often used larger type in its headings.

Thanks for the member inquiry which led to these responses from Tim.  Feel free to send your questions, comments as well.

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Filed under: Civil War, Collecting Newspapers, Common Questions, The Hobby
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The first newspapers in Kansas…

March 30, 2010 by · Leave a Comment 
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The first permanent settlement in Kansas was made at Fort Leavenworth in 1827, but  until 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by congress the region remained a part of the somewhat indefinitely bounded Indian Territory.

Early in 1834, missionary Jotham Meeker set up his printing press–the first press to be used west of the Missouri River–at the Shawnee Baptist Mission in present Johnson County. That year he published hymns, religious tracts, and other materials that were the first items printed in Kansas.

On February 24, 1835, Meeker printed at the Shawnee Mission the first number of the “Shawnee Sun” (Siwinowe Kesibwi), the first periodical publication in Kansas, and the first printed entirely in a Native American language. The paper was issued at irregular intervals from 1835 to as late as 1844, probably in limited editions of 150 or 100 copies. Measuring about 6 3/4 inches by 10 3/4 inches, the paper had two 8 1/2-inch columns of text per page.

The “Shawnee Sun” circulated among the Indians at and near the mission settlement. Today only one copy of one issue is known to have survived–the issue for November 1841, now in the library of the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

The “Kansas Weekly Herald” was established at Leavenworth on Sept. 15, 1854 by William Osborn and William Adams. It was a truly pioneer enterprise as is evidenced by the fact that the town site was occupied only by four temporary tents. The editor in his first number noted: “Our editorials have been written and our proof corrected while sitting on the ground with a big shingle for a table.”

Another newspaper was begun in Kickapoo, Kansas, in 1854 titled the “Pioneer“, and a year later the first newspaper at Topeka was established, the “Kansas Freeman“.

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The first newspapers in Iowa…

March 22, 2010 by · 1 Comment 
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The state of Iowa had various “owners” over the last 300+ years.  It became a French possession in 1682, in 1762 was ceded to Spain, in 1800 it was returned to France, who in 1803 passed ownership to the United States under the terms of the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1804-5 as part of the District of Louisiana it was under the government of the Indiana Territory. During the next seven years it was in the Missouri Territory, and from 1821-34 it was a part of the unorganized territory of the United States. From 1834-6 it was part of the Michigan Territory, and from 1836-8 a part of the Wisconsin Territory. In 1838 the Wisconsin Territory was divided & the western portion was named the Iowa Territory, which in 1846 was admitted as a state.

The first printing in the district was in 1836 when John King, who moved from Ohio to Dubuque, believed the town should have a newspaper and on May 11, 1836 began printing the “Visitor“, the first newspaper in Iowa. A year later the name changed to the “Iowa News“, and 4 years later to the “Miners’ Express“. Iowa’s second newspaper was the “Western Adventurer and Herald of the Upper Mississippi” (not sure how they fit that in the masthead) begun by Dr. Isaac Galland on June 28, 1837 in Montrose. It lasted for just a few months when the equipment was sold to James Edwards who took it to Fort Madison & on March 24, 1838 the first issue of the Fort Madison “Patriot” was published.

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Filed under: Collecting Newspapers, Common Questions, Noteworthy Issues, Pre Civil War, The Hobby
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Uncut newspapers: leave as they are?

March 20, 2010 by · 1 Comment 
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Fellow collector Morris Brill poses an interesting question worth sharing with others, along with my thoughts on the issue.

I suspect we have all encountered “uncut” newspapers from the 19th century, issues which are eight pages in length but which are essentially one large sheet of paper printed on both sides, then folded twice to produce the eight pages. This is how they came off the printing presses . Morris inquires:

“For the sake of maintaining the monetary value of such a newspaper is it best to leave the paper in this one piece condition or is it best to cut the paper so it folds normally like a book and the pages can be turned individually?”

Uncut issues are, for the most part, those which have survived the years by not being bound, kept loose by previous owners and eventually finding their way into the hands of collectors. Given that the vast majority of early newspapers in the collector market came from bound volumes once stored by libraries or other institutions then “disbound” into individual issues, uncut newspapers are relatively few in number. Once bound all margins, save for the spine, are guillotined at the bindery to produce an even, book-like edge thus losing the attachment at the top.

Since uncut issues are newspapers in the original state, as they were sold on the streets, my preference would be to keep them as such. Most collectibles tend to be more desirable in their original state: never clean an old coin; never paint an antique wagon; don’t removed the aged patina from an antique desk, etc. Are such newspapers more clumsy to read? Yes, to some degree. But they can be folded back and all 8 pages read with little difficulty. It’s obviously how it was done years ago as I’ve purchased several boxes of uncut 19th century newspapers which were folded many different ways, left as such by the reader.

They only time I might suggest cutting the top of an uncut sheet is the rare occasion when an issue was bound, causing all four leaves to be attached at the spine, yet the tops have not been trimmed. In such situations the newspaper cannot be folded back because of the attachment at the spine. I would take an exacto knife and cut the very top along the fold. Not much else can be done if the interior pages are to be read.

Collectors may have noticed that we charge a small premium for uncut newspapers. A downside to an uncut issue is they tend to be more worn than those bound as they have not been protected through the years by the bindings, but if one can obtain an issue which is both uncut and in great condition–and contains the Gettysburg Address–there’s a great item for any collection!

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Filed under: Common Questions, The Hobby, Valuation of Issues
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Featured websites – TeachHistory.com

March 18, 2010 by · Leave a Comment 
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Teachers with a love of history, listen up!  The following resource can improve your curriculum and make you a stronger educator.  Students of history will enjoy the breadth and depth of the historical journey as well.

TeachHistory is a fantastic website (blog), developed and maintained by Ben Edwards, which provides engaging information & a plethora of useful educational resources related to history.  It describes itself as:

“a blog dedicated to social studies and history teachers across the United States who use Colonial American history, imagination and multisensory teaching methods to inspire their students. Our goal is to provide a resource where teachers like you can access information about colonial history plus technologies, methods and products that are making a difference in education today.”

While Ben’s experience with teachers and students is varied, perhaps the most useful channel for keeping him in touch with the pulse of teacher/student interests and needs occur via the many intimate conversations had while engaging teachers and students through his Walking Tours of Historic Boston.  Combine this with both his (historic) heritage and his natural love of history, and you have the making of a blog which is sure to stay relevant over time.  Some of the recent posts include:

Colonel Shaw, Sergeant Carney and the 54th Massachusetts

Remembering Alex Haley and Roots

Black History Month: A Tribute to Phillis Wheatley

Young Ben Franklin and the Silence Dogood Letters

Teachers: Are You Engaging AND Empowering Your Students?

Many of the posts include detailed images and reference accounts of actual Rare & Early Newspapers – most of which come from his personal collection.  Ben fully grasps a foundational truth regarding primary sources:  “History is never more fascinating than when it is read from the day it was first reported.” Thanks Ben, for your contributions to both the Rare Newspapers and Educational communities.

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Filed under: Civil War, Collecting Newspapers, Colonial, Common Questions, Featured Websites, Revolutionary War, The 1700's, The Collectible Community, The Hobby, The Rare Newspapers Community
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