HOBBIES : COLLECTIBLES : Newspaper Headlines Spell More Than History Lessons

The first Apollo landing may have been one small step for man, but it was one giant leap into newspaper headline collecting for Brett Yaden.

The “Man Walks on Moon” headline started the 40-year-old Yorba Linda resident on a 22-year hobby that has led to a large collection of newspaper headline editions available through a catalogue he distributes nationwide.

Yaden has a few suggestions for would-be headline collectors. First, they should learn the value of headlines before they buy.

“Do your homework,” Yaden says, by looking at collectors’ price guides and seeing what comparable headlines are priced at.

Collectors should be looking for whole papers, not just the front pages (such front-page tear sheets are worth only about 60% of the value of the entire issue).

Banner headlines--those that stretch across the top of the newspaper--are the most desirable, as are the newspapers from the cities in which the event took place (for example, a Dallas paper after the John F. Kennedy assassination.)

“I had other collectors I know calling me from back East wanting me to get extra copies” of The Times during last year’s riots, Yaden says. “That’s where the event occurred, so that’s the paper they want.”

Yaden says it is the event itself that determines the value of a headline edition.

“I’ve heard of one guy selling Civil War-era newspapers for $10,” he says. “The thing is, they’re not about significant events . . . just the day-to-day war news. This means they really don’t have any value.”

He says it is the Kennedy assassination headline editions that people inquire about most.

“Kennedy is the biggest fascination in the 20th Century,” Yaden says. He says people wanting to buy Kennedy assassination headlines should expect to pay between $25 and $27; however, any Dallas newspaper headline for Nov. 23, 1963, would be worth $50 to $75.

Other 20th-Century events headline collectors covet, Yaden says, are those about the sinking of the Titanic, the bombing of Pearl Harbor (the first edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is most prized), and VE-Day in 1945.

Yaden also has a copy of what is probably the most famous headline of the 20th Century, the Chicago Tribune’s “Dewey Defeats Truman” from 1948.

Headlines about recent events--such as the Gulf War, the Challenger explosion and the fall of the Berlin Wall--are being hoarded by many people, Yaden says. The same can be said for last editions of such papers as the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Dallas Times-Herald.

“Now, everybody’s got a collector’s frame of mind,” he says.

He doesn’t know what effect the hoarding will have on future prices.

Those holding on to newspapers should store them in a way that avoids deterioration. Editions should be placed flat in polyethylene bags and kept from direct sunlight and places where there is high humidity, such as garages.

Yaden says he does have some sports headlines in his collection--including one about the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles in 1959--but that that is a totally separate area of collecting, and his main emphasis is on news headlines.

Besides, he says, “with all the stuff I’ve felt for the Dodgers, it would be really hard for me to part with a lot of those ones.”

To order Yaden’s catalogue, call him at (714) 779-8723.