How many of you keep old magazines? (I'm sad about Car and Driver)

So we are contemplating the dreaded, "down sizing"  since we are looking at an empty nest.  Getting ready to sell the house means  a purge of many years accumulation.  I have my GRM magazines organized, my SCCA mags semi organized and stacks of Car Craft,  Hot Rod and various mustang publications.  There was a time when I'd look at old magazines while working on a project, my head has always been good about remembering trivia, it came in handy with hot rod and car craft.  Sadly I don't remember the last time I did that.  I'm also at the point where I want to rip out and bind Randy Pobst's articles from SCCA.

I'm sad about getting rid of my old Car and Driver and motor trend mags.  IMO they don't have the quality of writing, at least nothing I'd want to save.  I'm not a hoarder, but I'm sick about not having copies of GRM and hot rod.  Even though I pay for the digital versions, it just isn't the same.

Have any of you totally made the switch to tossing your mags and looking up whatever online?  Logically it makes sense, but dang, it doesn't feel right.

On the plus side:  My wife is trying to find a house with a larger garage, or room to store more cars.  Them empty nest will have some perks!

I have many many Panorama Magazines in the original plastic still. PCA member but I am all online now. Most of the time I'd come home from a trip for work and there'd be 6 of them in my mail pile. Nope, right into a box.

Once I went back with a razor knife and cut out the articles I liked and have some in a binder, some in a folder.  GRM and CM got chopped - sorry, it got out of control.  

All I keep are Nostalgic Japanese magazines and R&T from 1975 and older.  
 

I have 10 years+ of grm.  Maybe like 14, from 2021 back.... for free and for months. No one wants them.

Have them on market place, sad to see them go. 

Reciently updated the ad, with a use them for kids projects, line your bird cage(don't tell me that your plan).....

Sad to think all this greatness is going to wind up in the recycle bin.

Next up, my hot rod collection from the 80s and early 90s, and motorcycle mags, dirt and street....

I can't keep them anymore.  No more room and I need to start purging to get ready for a serious house renovation (yeah... I know I've been saying that for months...).  I'll be donating a slew of CMS issues to the goody bags of the America's British Reliability Run this weekend.  Normally, the organizer would get them from Tim, but had some miscommunication this year. 

I keep them in the 2 guest bathrooms, for guests to read. Otherwise, throw them all away, except for some great articles I have saved over the years. 

I have zero car magazines.  I get nostalgic and wish I had kept some things over the years, but magazines were never one of those things.

I used to have a full set of EVO magazine along with a 15 year run of Wired starting in '94 (now there's a mag that declined) and a pile of GRMs. When I moved four years ago, I divested myself of most of them. I keep ones that have my cars in them or where I've got something published, plus a couple from the 80s and 90s like the first twin-engine CRX issue of C+D. 

I never used them for reference so it wasn't a matter of replacing them with Google. I used them to revisit how we viewed certain cars (and tech) in the context of their time, and because there was some excellent writing in some of them. 

I keep back issues of Octane (back to 2004), and Vintage Motorsport (back to 1994). Nothing else. (Although I have a few really old R&T, C and D, and SCG stashed in the garage). One nice thing about being a senior citizen is that I can grab an older copy of one of those and re-read it as if it was the first time I've seen it. 

You can pry Wings & Airpower from my cold, dead hands. It reads better than most books, exclusive photos, written by experts or the aviators themselves. Started in 71 and ceased publication In 2004. I treasure them. 30 years of Sport Aviation aren't going anywhere either.

Appleseed said:

You can pry Wings & Airpower from my cold, dead hands. It reads better than most books, exclusive photos, written by experts or the aviators themselves. Started in 71 and ceased publication In 2004. I treasure them. 30 years of Sport Aviation aren't going anywhere either.

You definitely win!

In reply to thedoc :

You should see the other room.

I have many, many years worth of GRM, although I purged a few a while back. 
 

I've kept about five years of Car and Driver from the late 80s, back when the magazine was really important to me. I could also see myself buying a few more cars from that era and I like having period correct articles on them.

And I love the old ads from Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories, MG Mitten, V. Polek, and Villem B. Haan. I really miss that kind of thing. I even like seeing all the old tread patterns in the Tire Rack ads. 
 

I also have a milk crate or two of my uncle's car magazines from the 60s that I found in my grandmother's attic. I haven't gone through them in a long time, but I've read them all cover to cover. Those are important to me. 
 
I've started tossing most of the newer stuff, although I will admit that I'm jealous of Steve Magnante's magazine room. 

I had a very large collection of automotive magazines starting from the early nineties until I moved to Texas in 2013. I got rid of all of them then.  Tons of valuable little bits of information that I would remember and then go back and read up on during a project.  But that was just too much to move halfway across the country.  

Another "used to" person.  I noticed how little I was going back to old magazines, and if it's really important, I'm sure I can find it somewhere.  I was following my dad's lead, as he's got quite the magazine collection.  There was some limited benefit when we were looking at some used cars- but with the internet, it's not all that helpful.

I've got a couple storage totes in my basement with a few years worth of Excellence.  Maybe one day, I will own a 911 and some of those will be relevant.  Still not planning to get rid of them.  

I subscribed to Car & Driver when I was 15, and only recently did I let my subscription lapse. I was kind of sad to see it go, it was a big part of my life for almost 40 years.  In fact, I also subscribed to Motor Trend and Road & Track for almost as long, and have let both go as well. I loved the writing from people like Brock Yates and Jean Jennings and so many others, and I loved dreaming about the cars that they wrote about. Lately though, the magazines have gotten pretty thin, there is very little difference between the three, and because they follow the market, coverage is focused on SUVs and the latest EV to come along. The publishers have largely shifted their focus to paid digital content, so the printed versions are a shadow of their former selves. Now, when I want to scratch that itch, I scroll on my phone for Johnny Lieberman, Jason Camissa and Randy Pobst videos. 

I used to hoard old magazines, but I never went back to them for anything. So I cut out the articles for cars that I owned and filed them away, and the mags went to the recycler. I probably still have a box or two in the attic somewhere. 

My collection:

Another long-time C&D subscriber here. When I made this shelf a few years back, I decided to just keep the Rad-era stuff, except of course for my favorite mag, GRM.  Once this was full, I decided to stop saving the mags, as everything is more or less available online these days. Nice to have the reference, though, or just take a trip down memory lane.

Not since I moved cross country back in 2012. Preparing for the move I realized there just wasn't a reason to have/pay to ship 10+ years of GamePro, PCGamer, or Lowrider magazine. Lots of space, lots of weight, and I never went back to them after the first read through.

Now I don't even subscribe to any, digitally or otherwise. I get better, more up to date information faster with the internet than I ever did waiting months for magazines to come out that were out of date when they were written.

Except for some reason, when we moved, the wife started getting Elle, that she never signed up for. Now I'm getting it, despite never having signed up for it. 

Since the world went digital, I no longer keep any magazines. I have also gotten rid of 1000s of paperback books. If a book is truly spectacular I will buy a hardback or a first edition to keep on the shelf. I also have a few antique prints of significant books. Beyond that, everything was donated to the local library or Goodwill.   

Hot Rod back to 1967, GRM to 1987, Classic Motorsport from the beginning. Everything else I keep a year's worth and then throw out.

I have a trunk full of C7D, MT and Automobile in the basement.  I got subscriptions when I was in grade school, mid 80's, and have most still.  Once the kids move out I have plans to put shelves up and get them out of the basement but we will see if that happens or not.  On the other hand, with Radwood taking off they may be worth throwing on eBay.

Used to keep everything, but with the internet most of the data is out there someplace if its newer than 1990 or so. I hung onto a few key issues of Car and Driver from the 80s and some random things here and there along with the GRM challenge issues.

I've been purging old stuff, I like to keep at least one of each title.
If there's an article I like I'll clip and scan it.

In reply to Appleseed :

Did you ever subscribe to Affordable Flying???

Hahaha, not a topic with longevity.