PUTTING A VALUE ON NEWS
There's no doubt that President Elect Obama's election win last month created quite a media frenzy. Many newspapers in the U.S. are reporting November sales increases on the back of the election and credit crisis fears.
The current edition of Time magazine has Obama as it's 'Person of the Year', and copies of the special double edition are already changing hands for up to five times the cover price on eBay. I believe it's sold out in most places, so it's true that coverage of momentous or historic events does lead to increased sales.
Somewhere I have a collection of UK daily newspapers from September 12, 2001. I was a newspaper journalist back then and I didn't think about the collectible value of what I was buying. For me it was purely about the news. Recently I saw one of those newspapers selling on eBay for $60.
Since then I have been keeping copies of newspapers and magazines that I feel cover important events. I have the September coup editions of The Bangkok Post, The Nation and most of the Thai language editions from September 2006. I also have a lot of the post-victory Obama coverage that has appeared in magazines.
My only regret is not getting a copy of The New Yorker which had the now infamous caricature of Obama earlier in the summer. That's now worth $100 or more.
2 comments:
what price would you put up for the recently banned edition of The Economist?
Good point Saraburian.
I would guess one edition, to a collector or someone interested in Thai current affairs, would be worth at least $10-S15 right now. I'd pay that if I didn't already have my own copy sitting safely in Singapore.
You won't make a lot of money on it, but there are people I know who would like to get their hands on a copy.
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