| March 2010 WHAT’S IT WORTH?
By Archer Di Peppe
Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
Ben Franklin’s father thought that his tenth son should be a minister. Ben went to school for one year before limited family finances forced him into another direction. The young boy hoped for a life on the sea, but another brother had lost his life in that career, so Ben’s father apprenticed him to an older brother James in the printing business in Boston. Ben was twelve.
The printing business was just a half step from the newspaper business, except that in the early 1700’s there was no newspaper business in the American Colonies. There had been some attempts at publishing rehashed six-month old news from Europe, but it is James who has been credited by many with starting the first newspaper in America, The New England Courant. The first paper made its debut on August 7, 1721. The most popular part of the paper was a totally new idea called Letters to the Editor. Here local citizens sent in criticisms of their fellow countrymen’s manners and morals.
Ben started secretly writing letters to his own paper under the name Silence Dogood. His letters were so popular that Franklin’s brother upbraided him for them when he found out that they were penned by the young upstart. Ben didn’t like working for James anyway, and he ran away to New York City. There was no work, and he had no money, so he walked from New York to Philadelphia. The rest is, as they say, history.
Recently, Paul Akers of the Free Lance-Star wrote about being called an idiot by a reader during a stormy telephone call. I would have been tempted to remind the caller that it is called an opinion page, not their opinion page. I once told Paul that if he wasn’t getting at least a couple of people a week calling threatening to cancel the paper, then he probably wasn’t working hard enough.
Many Americans love their newspapers so much that they hang on to them. You probably have some in a drawer or in a trunk in the attic. Attics and basements are probably the worse places to store anything due to temperature and humidity fluctuations. The papers we save generally report some historic event. They come under the collectable heading of ephemerals. “Ephemeral” is a Greek word that literally means “lasting for a day”.
The bad news is that most of those old papers are not worth a whole lot. You can go on ebay, and they will sell you original newspapers for almost any major Twentieth Century event, such as “Kennedy Assassinated”, “Man Lands On Moon”, “Amelia Earhart Missing”, or “Nixon Resigns” for $19.95 plus S&H under the “buy it now price”. You can get them for even less if you care to participate in the online auction. A paper from a major paper in New York or Chicago will generally bring more than the same day from a much smaller city.
An online bookseller was asking $230 for a 1773 issue of the Massachusetts Gazette. By the time you get to1830, you can find common papers for $30 to $40. Civil War papers are a different story. Northern papers can easily run $100 to $200 if they cover a major battle. Southern papers can cost you twice that much and more. Even a common one can run over $200. Recently a Richmond Examiner from 1863 covering the Battle of Gettysburg sold for $2130 on ebay.
Arch Di Peppe is interested in seeing your collectibles. Call him at 373-9636.
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