How long do you keep media guides?

Okay...I lean heavily toward toss them, but during the summer we do a series of Where are they Now? features, and I could see looking back through to pull out information for those stories. But in this digital age, much of that history can be found somewhere online anyway.

For example, we did a CFL players from the 60s last summer, and I found pdfs of old media guides for the Argonauts online to help with that story.

 

Yeah, wikipedia. It is a great source to get quality info from.

 

I've been out for a while, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure MLB, NFL & NHL guides are online only now, which is an absolute shame. A well-worn media guide at the end of a season was like a badge of honor. And after a couple weeks you knew exactly where everything was. Better to spend a minute or less flipping thru the book and finding what you need than going to a team site, searching for the media guide, searching the table of contents and then scrolling down to maybe find what you needed (but more likely find something completely unrelated to what you needed).

But hey these teams are struggling to make ends meet so yay online media guides.

 

When I first took over here in 1996, I tossed out tons of media guides the previous sports editor had kept through the years. I remember at least two KU football guides from 1977.

 

I throw them out the day before I need them.

Or, at least, that's how it always seems to work.

 

Hard copies of MLB team guides still exist. I stopped taking them, though. MLB puts them all on a single flash drive, which does fine for everything aside from the home team. I still want (and keep) a real copy from the home team. But otherwise, they're just a hellish amount of clutter, given the size of the books and 30 teams.

 

I sold a ton of them on ebay ages ago and made several hundred dollars. I did so with my boss' blessing. They were about to throw a couple boxes out and I asked him if I could have them and told him I was going to sell them and he was completely fine with it.

I don't think you can make on ebay now what you could in the late 1990s.

 

I remember covering baseball in the mid-to-late 1990s where if I lost my media guide while on the road, I was dead. These days you should never need one. Everything is online...

 

Growing up, I used to have all kinds of Sporting News "books," like their annual Baseball Guide or Daguerreotypes, the registry of all-time greats.

I shudder to think what they would have been worth today if I had held onto them.

 

Contrary to popular opinion, not much. You'd be surprised how many phone calls I've taken that start with: "I've got a complete run of TSN Guides from 1950-something to 1990-something and now I'm downsizing ..."

The places that could use them already have them and most everyone else wants to get rid of their clutter same as you do.

 

The only people who will pay a decent amount of money for an old media guide are serious collectors and they definitely exist. I sold a couple Redskins guides from the early 70s for $50 each. I sold a Cowboys one that might have been the year they won their first Super Bowl $75. This was all back in 1998 or 1999. I was surprised at some of the stuff that didn't sell like a bunch of Steelers guides from the 1970s. Old game programs are more popular.

 

Actually went through a drawer at my old desk here in the newsroom and found a 1991 Houston Oilers media guide.

I may keep it, as a huge Oilers/Texans fan. Call it my severance package