Older Signs of the Times

[John Yarnell]

I came across some older Signs of the Times Magazines on Ebay a couple of days ago. Early 50’s – 70’s I have never seen any of issues earlier than the mid 90’s. In my experience today’s ST is mostly geared towards the larger commercial shops. Is the ST of 50’s and 60’s targeted towards a broader range of shops seeing that it was the only magazine for sign makers at that time?
The person selling them on Ebay was asking $7.50 an issue. I bought one with an interesting cover from the early 60’s with 2 guys sitting on milk crates hand painting a service truck. I emailed the seller telling him I would buy more if he would give me deal. He responded back that he had 135 issues spanning from the early 50’s through early 80’s. He was asking $275 for the lot including shipping. I’m looking for a little insight on the magazine back then and if you think that it is worth the price he is asking.

Thanks John

[Billy Pickett]

... While mostly for "commercial" shops, there are tid bits of valuable wisdom and other neat-o things in every issue.

$7.50 per ? ...seems outrageously high. I'd bet you can (eventually) find somebody to give 'em to you. Someone like me. I'd love to pass mine on.

...You can have all of the ones that I have (50's- 70's) , but you'll have to come and get 'em. I have stacks and don't want to ship 'em.[/i]

[Mike Jackson]

John,
When I started in 1973, I purchased two subscriptions to ST. I cut one up and then kept one in a file cabinet. After 30 years, I pretty much gave up on the duplicates and put most of them in the recycle bin, keeping the stuff I cut out for the morgue.

As far as I am concerned, the only ones that really had much of a concentration of good articles happened when Tod Swormstedt was the editor. After he moved on from the editor position, I stopped buying the magazine...though I get a free subscription now for just filling out a form yearly. Now, there might be one article of interest for me, plus maybe a couple of new products ads.

I picked up some ST magazines from Steven Parrish from the 50's thru the late 60's. Generally speaking, I found them interesting from a historical point of view, but uninspiring from a design point of view. Besides being mostly in black and white, the magazines just looked GRAY, content wise.

Of course, any magazine from any year since the beginnings can contain some little jewels, and especially in the contest issues starting in about 1975 or so.

Tod sent out a couple of the very oldest ST magazines for me to look over and scan one time. They didn't have many sign photos, but did have some interesting articles and historical tidbits. I personally enjoy the old ads. I find them almost more revealing of the state of the trade than then actual articles.

Personally, I'd pay more for a stack of old SignCrafts! They are much more visual and loaded with articles that would interest me.

Good luck,
Mike Jackson

[John Yarnell]

Thanks Billy Bob for the info and the gracious offer! I would love to take you up on that whenever you are ready to part with your collection. Did you happen to notice if the farther back you looked the more the magazine catered to smaller shops.

Thanks again John

[John Yarnell]

Well Mike I’d be interested in any old sign magazines I could get a hold of. If anyone out there would like to sell or send off to a good home there old collections I would be interested. I have only been subscribing to Sign Craft, Sign Business and Signs of the Times for the last 4 years or so. Anything older than that makes for hours of good reading to me.

Thanks John

[Raymond Chapman]

I started subscribing to ST back in the late 50's and have every issue since then. Just like now, there was not a lot of attention given to the small shops until Chester Cunningham came along and then the Letterheads a little later.

Like Mike said, Tod gave more emphasis to us smaller guys.

The man who taught me a lot about hand lettering, Ellison Edwards, gave me some old ST issues dating back into the 20's - really interesting stuff.

My place is over running with magazines - every issue of SignCraft, Sign Business, and the others that have come along in the last few years.

From time to time there were some interesting features in ST, but not very often.

[Jack Lowry]

I have several shelves of ST and SignCraft, SC from day one also, maybe a few missing here and there.

After years, I wonder what will become of them, there are no seemingly new hand letter folks coming up now.

I like many of you spent hours combing the pages looking for new ideas and concepts, and found them.