Media Guides question

I am a freelancer who has built up a decent sized gaggle of media guides from the past two years. They are cluttering up my apartment, but I don't want to simply throw them away. I am damn near positive that the places I have freelanced for don't want them; they don't want the clutter anymore than I do. What does everyone else do when faced with this dilemma? Do I sell them on eBay?

 

Don't be afraid to rip them up - tear out the stuff you want or the stuff you think you'll use again (like that cool section on John Wooden from the UCLA men's basketball guide, or information on Local U's players-in-the-pros). Then take what's left, like the crappy academic section or the three-page bio on the bench player, to the recycle bin.

Depending on what you have you could try eBay, but 1) hard-core fans purchase new guides each year and 2) nobody wants the Bumblefuck Community College softball guide.

 

Definitely trash 'em. I dumped a whole bunch the other day...it can be liberating.

Also -- not to be Debbie Downer -- wouldn't it be unethical to turn a profit from media guides you received for free as part of your professional life?

 

NFL media guides are worth saving. i have full binders going back quite a ways in the basement.

there's a lot of stuff in there that you can't get elsewhere - detailed game-by-game stats, participation info, detailed bios including college info, etc.

i find myself going down there a few times a year for stuff that simply isn't available anywhere online

 

Incidentally, universities (and pro teams) have been known to track down the sources of media guides being sold on eBay or at used book shops, and blacklist them from receiving credentials in the future. So if you're planning to ever cover these teams again, I wouldn't sell 'em.

I'd either donate them to a library (if they want them), give them to any superfans you may know (although as Cadet notes, they probably already have them) or chuck 'em.

 

wallpaper?

 

RogerDorn, by the way, is a solid name.

"What's the matter, rookie fuckwad? Can't you take a little joke?"

 

How the hell are they going to track a media guide sold to a used book store?

 

Well, that's a productive use of time and manpower for a pro team or major college -- find out who sold a media guide for $4. Who checks, the guy who played the library cop on "Seinfeld?"

In the meantime, baseball PR interns are right now lugging boxes of last year's media guides out to the dumpsters.

 

HA! Ebay. I've got a friend who buys jerseys in bulk and then auctions them off like hotcakes. During the super bowl he paid no attention to our pool, he was in front of his computer like Gordon Gekko with the Manning jerseys, well before Peyton had the MVP trophy in his hands. I teased the kid, but he made a freggin fortune that night. People will buy anything.

I've actually thought about all my media guides from my college days--ones with players who are now NFL stars and future hall-of-famers on the cover. But haven't followed through. Any ideas on what people actually shell out for things like that?

 

I know a guy who does similarly silly shit. Except instead of buying GOOD jerseys, he raids--and I mean RAIDS--dollar stores for shit like folders picturing Brett Favre, Kobe Bryant, Emmitt Smith (in a Cowboys uniform) and Randy Moss (in a Vikings uniform). He also hits the outlets and gets slightly better stuff like team blankets and T-shirts...nothing you can't find for cheap on your own. Yet he finds it and sells it and fancies himself as paying his kids' college education with his profits. He tells us on a weekly basis how much money he's making, but a little investigating his EBay profile proves he is indeed full o' crap. He posts these things like two or three times apiece and they sell for nothing more than a few bucks. So he's losing whatever he makes in posting fees.

Still funny to hear him brag. And it's still funny that he and/or his wife end up with me and/or my wife in our annual Secret Santa drawing...and that my wife or I ALWAYS get a blanket from our favorite teams. Always!

To answer your more relevant question, I bought a bunch of old media guides of a team I covered a few years ago. I don't think I spent more than $4 or $5 on any of them. If you're going to sell them, anything is better than nothing, but don't expect to get much.