Old Magazines, New Gift Idea

OK, so Great-Aunt Gertrude’s 70th wedding anniversary is coming up and the whole family’s in a tizzy over what to get her because the traditional gift list stops with diamonds for the 60th. May we suggest something in paper? Try a vintage magazine gleaned from the hundreds of thousands of periodicals Burbank’s Book Castle Movie and Magazine World sells from its 20,000-square-foot warehouse.

“People call in and say they’re cleaning out their garage, and it turns out they’ve got a complete run of Time magazine since the ‘30s that they never threw out,” says Bill Nelson, 25, manager of the store at 212 N. San Fernando Blvd.

Among its hundreds of titles, the store has complete inventories of widely circulated magazines and spottier inventories of more obscure magazines, Nelson says. Prices range from half the cover price for recent issues to $25 for celebrity issues and those of historical interest, such as a 1940s Time magazine with Gen. George S. Patton on the cover.

Despite the collection’s depth, Nelson says he still gets stumped.

“Someone today requested a 1916 Ladies’ Home Journal,” he says. “We have them going back that far, but the one they wanted wasn’t there.”