My collecting gene kicked in at an early age. At some point when in elementary school I discovered that really old coins could be purchased—wow! I found owning a penny from 50 years before I was born intriguing and fascinating, even though others considered it nothing more than curious. They just didn’t get it.
[1]I pursued the coin-collecting hobby for many years; heck, I still have many I purchased 60 years ago. But I must admit, collecting old coins is certainly not very experiential. There’s a date and a dead guy’s image on the front, and some curious symbol or building on the back. That’s about it. You can “experience” an old coin in about 3.5 seconds.
Some 50 years ago I discovered an old newspaper from 1827 at a flea market priced at $3. It was an epiphanal moment for my collecting passion. Here was something very old that could be enjoyed for more than 3.5 seconds. It was just a four-page newspaper but it must have taken at least 20 minutes to “experience” from beginning to end. News reports, advertisements, curious notes about travel, legal notices, criminal reports—all of it was so different from my experience I was living.
As I relegated my coin collection to a dresser drawer, I pursued more old newspapers from wherever I could find them. Each was a different experience from a different era. Not only were the news reports from the Civil War different from the Revolutionary War, & different from the 1920’s, but the advertisements, notices, and other quaint tidbits were much different as well.
At times I found inconspicuous, benign reports of no historical consequence to be more interesting than the news report which prompted the purchase. A benign listing of the West Point admissions for 1839 which included Ulysses S. Grant can be a fascinating find. After all, who cared about the name Ulysses S. Grant in 1839? Or what about discovering a small classified ad for “Lincoln and Herndon, Attorneys & Counsellors At Law” in an 1857 Illinois newspaper. Did I really care anymore about the report of political troubles in Kansas, the reason for which I purchased the newspaper?
And the capability of discovering intriguing reports—thanks to the internet–adds so much more dimension to early newspapers. It is common to read of fugitive slave reports which include the names of the slave & its owner, neither of which might mean anything to anyone. But a quick check on the internet for “Shadrach Minkins [2]” unveils a fascinating and notable drama on the struggles & horrors of this runaway slave in 1850, greatly enriching the innocuous report by allowing the reader to experience a piece of American history that otherwise would have been easy to pass over.
This is what differentiates old newspapers from the rest of the collectible world. It is dramatically more experiential. What other collectible requires a half hour to fully experience? Stamps? Crocks? Matchbook covers? Furniture? Ink wells? Certainly not.
With an old newspaper, whether it be a $500 issue from the colonial era or an $8 newspaper from 1868, one gets far more than the report that prompted the purchase. Every early newspaper opens up an entire world of experiences just waiting to be discovered.