Read All About It! Fancier of Old Newspapers Does Just That : Collector: Stories--and advertisements--from the past give Van Nuys man a firsthand look at history.
George Washington is dead.
Not exactly front-page news?
To John Eplett it is.
Eplett read all about it on the front page of the Dec. 25 edition of the Columbian (Mass.) Centinel. But the news cost him more than a quarter. Eplett paid $300 for the paper, which was printed in 1799.
To some, Washington’s death is just old news. But to Eplett, who collects old newspapers, it’s history.
“The legacy of the father of his country,” Eplett reads aloud from the paper, which is bordered by a black line in memory of the President. “Washington is no more.”
Eplett has read the article dozens of times, but he’s still incredulous.
“Can you believe they were already calling him the father of our country--less than two weeks after he died?”
Eplett, who lives in Van Nuys, owns more than 500 historical papers, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. His collection chronicles the murder trial of Jesse James, Custer’s last stand, the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the sinking of the Titanic. It also provides insight into the everyday concerns of early Americans, including bad breath and hemorrhoids.
“I don’t miss a thing,” says Eplett, 54, who uses a magnifying glass to read the early papers, which are printed in very small type. “I read every single word, including the advertisements.”
Newspaper collectors are about as rare as the papers themselves. There are only a few hundred serious collectors in the country and only a handful in Los Angeles. “People don’t like the bulk,” says Richard Robinson, a collector from West Los Angeles, whose several thousand newspapers are stored in acid-free plastic envelopes in several locations. “It’s not like stamps or coins, where you can have an entire collection in a few drawers.”
But collectors say it’s a lot more rewarding.
In fact, Eplett sold his entire gold and silver coin collection worth about $60,000 to buy newspapers. “I thought coins were interesting,” he says, “but they don’t hold a candle to newspapers.
Eplett admits that at first he was just trying to make money selling the papers. “But then I realized I was dealing with American history,” he says.
Now, he says, he’s looking for organizations interested in displaying his collection, so others can share in the thrill of reading history firsthand.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is considering showing the collection at its museum in Whittier, according to Sheriff’s Sgt. Linda Edmunds. Eplett is lucky he turned out to be a history buff because, as far as making money, he might have sunk like the Titanic. There’s just not a great demand for old newspapers, and most are worth only a few dollars.
The rarest ones, however, command a few thousand, and newspaper collectors can compete as fiercely as rival reporters.
“There’s a lot of viciousness that goes on,” says Charles Nemzer, a collector from Beverly Hills, whose newspapers span 1717 to 1865. “People would cut their arms off to get some papers.”
The most sought-after papers are those about President Lincoln’s death. “It’s still just like he died yesterday,” says Nemzer, who owns one printed the night before Lincoln was shot, announcing that the President would be attending Ford’s Theatre.
Eplett buys his papers from dealers, university archives, private collectors and newspaper libraries. He says he has spent about $60,000 and estimates that his collection is worth more than $400,000 retail. But other collectors say that’s an exaggeration.
The value of a newspaper, collectors say, depends on its condition, the importance of the event reported, the rarity of the paper and how soon after an event the article appeared.
For instance, Eplett says, the ultimate newspaper reporting the death of John F. Kennedy would be one published in Dallas on the same day. Similarly, although the Dec. 25 paper lamenting Washington’s death is valuable, Eplett could get more for one published closer to Washington’s death, which occurred Dec. 14.
Eplett’s most valuable paper is one published before the event--the Chicago Daily Tribune’s embarrassing blunder of Nov. 3, 1948, when a banner headline proclaimed, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
The paper, free of brown spots and tears, is worth more than $3,000, Eplett says. But Nemzer and Robinson say it’s worth only $400.
Most of Eplett’s early papers are in top-notch condition because, until the Civil War, newspapers were made of rags and linen instead of wood pulp. “They don’t get brittle,” he says.
Eplett says he gets as big a thrill reading the advertisements as he does the articles--particularly the ads for cure-all medicines, which dominated papers of the late 1800s.
“How many suffer torture day after day, making life a burden and robbing existence of all pleasure owing to the secret suffering of piles?” says an ad for Simmon’s Liver Regulator in the 1876 Denison (Tex.) Daily News.
The medicine, according to the ads, was intended to cure ailments such as bad breath, constipation and headaches. “Do not neglect so sure a remedy for these repulsive disorders,” the ad warns.
Eplett also owns a newspaper with an ad for Dr. John Greenwood, the dentist who made Washington’s false teeth, and another with an ad for Lincoln’s law office.
Although references to famous people excite Eplett, he says he learns more about American culture and mores from incidents involving ordinary people.
An 1876 Denison paper, for instance, reports: “Mrs. Russell Outraged by a Negro Fiend.”
“Verily, it never rains but it pours,” the article begins. “This morning, while at home attending her household duties, Mrs. Russell was attacked and ravished by a Negro. Would-be rescuers were too late, however. This fiendish villain had accomplished his hellish design.”
Newspapers with articles about ordinary people aren’t worth much, but, Eplett said, to him the firsthand accounts are a priceless look at the culture and attitudes of the time.
“These are things,” he says, “that you just don’t read about in books or see in the movies.”