A Guide to the Best of Southern California : COLLECTIBLES : Paper Chase

Burt Blum makes his living off what some people might call trash. After years of collecting paper memorabilia--old magazines, football programs, sheet music and matchbooks by the tens of thousands--he had enough fill a shop, the Santa Monica Trading Company.

Hollywood designers raid his stash of Vogues and Harper’s Bazaars for ideas on how to dress a character or set from another decade, as far back as the 1880s. Baseball nuts pay up to $150 for issues of Life with Maris, Mantle or DiMaggio on the cover; others featuring lesser names are marked according to age--the older, the pricier. And literary types know the value of Esquire rises when the works of Fitzgerald or Hemingway grace its pages.

Also on file by subject are pamphlets, brochures--you name it--on topics ranging from architecture to trains to World War II.

Santa Monica Trading Company, 2705 Main St., Santa Monica; (213) 392-4806.