The reason I collected it: the perfect logo for the company…

June 2, 2025 by  
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When I began this company back in 1975, my offerings were simply typed lists of newspapers I had recently purchased. When an issue sold, I cut it out, added new ones to the bottom of the list, made photocopies of the 8 1/2 by 14 sheets, and mailed them to those expressing interest.

I later evolved my offerings into a small catalog, essentially 8 1/2 by 11 sheets folded in half resulting in 16 pages of 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches. I wanted a logo for the cover that would represent what I was selling. Not finding anything magical, I opted for a print of a colonial printing press. Perhaps some of you still have some of those old catalogs featuring the printing press.

But a printing press was too generic. It was not specific to newspapers; books, pamphlets, broadsides–anything with ink–were printed on a printing press. So my quest for a more perfect image continued.

Back in the late 1900’s I was doing research on a collection of the “Illustrated London News“, the model that would be followed by Leslie’s Illustrated, Harper’s Weekly, and a host of other illustrated newspapers. On the back page of an issue from 1862 there was a brief article titled: “The Newsboy“ and it was accompanied by a great print of a young newsboy offering a newspaper (shown below). It was the perfect find. It had an old-time look (it was from 1862 after all), it was specific to newspapers, and it had a generally pleasant appearance that I thought would work well as a logo.

And so it became the framework for our logo (shown to the right above). You will find it front & center on our website and on any number of printed pieces we produce each year. So if you’ve ever wanted how it was created, perhaps appropriately, it came from an old newspaper.

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Filed under: Business News, Civil War, Illustrated Newspapers, The Collectible Community
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