A few months ago, a friend of my friend, Claynferno (definitely a good follow, especially if you like cat videos), asked if he could help her sell some old comics that had belonged to someone she knew who had passed away. Clay came to me, knowing that I have a bit of experience in that arena. Since I get a charge out of selling old stuff, I like money (We were getting a cut of the sales), and because I would do anything for Clay, I agreed to see if there was a market for any of them.
We were given a few boxes containing a couple hundred comics, including full runs of series like Y: The Last Man and Power Pack. Plus a crazy rare KISS comic put out by Marvel that apparently was printed with samples of the band’s blood in the ink. We gave Clay’s friend $527 and kept the rest. “There will be more comics coming in August,” I was told. “And some Playboys!”
Playboys? Ok. People are buying physical media, so maybe someone is looking for old Playboys. I figured it was worth a shot.
The August batch was much bigger, with more valuable books and more complete runs: Dazzler, ElfQuest, Quasar, the very first appearance of Ghost Rider, plus several boxes of Playboy magazines. Some full years from the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s, ending around 2004, when, let’s face it, there wasn’t really a need for paper porn anymore.
At first, my wife and I got a kick out of it. She enjoyed looking at the covers, trying to find the Playboy logo. Apparently, starting in the early days of Playboy, it became a running tradition and internal joke for the magazine’s staff to conceal the small rabbit silhouette somewhere on the cover, usually on a scantily-clad woman’s lingerie or jewelry. Or they’re sitting on it.
It made for a fun afternoon, sifting through them, looking for the bunny and trying to figure out the best way to sell a couple hundred magazines.
We also started to realize that these were more than old porn mags. They were almost a time capsule, with the covers advertising articles about Napster or The Sopranos, or steroid use in baseball, things that were certainly newsworthy when the magazine was published, but not so much anymore. There were also hilarious ads for things like cigarettes and whiskey and condoms, and basically anything that the editors thought men would buy. But there was also some actual journalism going on between the centerfolds. Interviews with politicians and celebrities, about important topics. Strangely enough, there I was, actually looking at them for the articles!
After a little while, though, I saw a kind of sad pattern develop in the issues from this century. Rather than promoting a piece that someone may want to read, or even a witty pun about the featured Playmate, the covers would simply list the pseudo-celebrity’s name and directly under it, in giant, bold letters, the word “NUDE” or “NAKED!” or even “INCREDIBLY NUDE!” I understand you have to sell the thing, but do you need to sell it to the lowest common denominator? Couldn’t you show a little creativity?
The same sense of diminishing effort carried over to the pictorials. While I didn’t exactly study them, by the 2000s, every issue seemed almost right off the assembly-line: the same obvious Photoshop effects, the same poses, on the same pillows, and even the same fake smiles. Maybe it’s the benefit of hindsight, but the whole magazine seemed to be going through the motions at exactly the moment it needed to give people a reason to keep buying it. I found it amazing that it lasted as long as it did. I was shocked to learn that Playboy was still being published all the way up to 2020. Even Life stopped being a monthly magazine in 2000.
Perhaps the saddest part of the whole thing (for me) was that the magazines themselves weren’t worth all that much. I sold one that had Donald Trump on the cover from March 1990 for $40, but some of the more sought-after ones, like the Madonna issue, weren’t in my boxes. So, I attempted to sell them in full-year lots, because that’s what I saw other people doing on eBay. After a few weeks, none of them were moving. I actually thought about throwing them in the woods, so maybe some kid could find them and relive my youth.
I instead decided to lower my prices, and my expectations. A couple of full-year listings have sold since, but it seems like even nostalgia has its limits. People may remember buying Playboy, reading it, or maybe sneaking it out from whoever’s mattress it was hidden under. But they don’t seem very willing to pay for the experience in 2026. Unless they like Trump. Take from that what you will.
Still, despite the fact that I now have a couple hundred Playboys that I don’t know what to do with, I’m okay with people in general not wanting to buy old porn. Maybe that’s what makes them feel so much like a time capsule. They’re artifacts from a world that existed not all that long ago but already feels like it has disappeared.
Old comics? They have an audience. Most of them sell, even full runs of Power Pack. Old Playboys? Maybe they should have stayed in the woods.