Not specifically older, collectable magazines, but what do you do with all your more recent magic mags? Between Genii, Magic and Linking Rings I'm accumulating 36 new issues a year! They're starting to take up a lot of space.
For the time being I'm keeping them all, but it feels a little silly. I never really go back to them after the month of their publication. They're also not really worth anything.
I've toyed with the idea of going through each of them one last time, tearing out just the pages that I care about and dumping the rest, but I can't really commit to that idea.
What do you guys do? Just keep them all?

I used to keep them until the stacks just got in the way. So I gave some away and threw the rest out. Nowadays I'll keep one if it has anything REALLY relevant in it. (Sometimes tearing out just the pages I want, like you said). Otherwise I just get rid of them.

I've reciently thrown out over a thousand issues after learning todays values. I used to give hundreds of mags to magic clubs and the Castle but no one wants paper anymore.... Paper is dead.

What will become of the classic paper-tear trick in 30 years, we'll have to Tear & Restore tablets.

Wow as a collector this makes me cringe. The idea of tearing out pages or throwing away magic literature of any kind. Wow. I would suggest if you do not want them , put them on ebay you will get a little of your subscription cost back or offer them to Café members just for the cost of shipping etc or better yet any of them from the past 10 years I would ultimately suggest donated to your local magic orginazation with the intention of letting some of the younger members (that can't afford subscriptions) to borrow read and return to the club for the next young guy (or gal) coming through.
Just my two cents...or you could just send them to me and I will add them to the other 3500 magazines I have in my collection. haha.

I have not counted mine, but I have thousands here, too. Linking Ring, MUM, Magic, Genii, Tops, and several other titles. When I moved here a few years ago, I boxed them and there they stay, at least for now. I can't even count how many boxes there are. The more recent ones, I usually start a stack in my office. When it gets large enough, I box them and continue the process.

I have acquired collections of magazines, so there are surely some duplicates in the lot, and I have some that are quite old. I have many from the 1940s and forward. My oldest Linking Ring is from 1928. It has an ad placed by Bess Houdini.

Why do I keep them? Certainly not for their monetary value. (There are other reasons for collecting things.) Some of the best and most obscure magic can be found in magazines... more so than in a lot of books I dare say. Most of this magic was forgotten as soon as the next issue came out (as cbmar admitted).Want to find a trick that NO ONE else is doing?? Look in the magazines!

There is also a remarkable documentation of magic history from ground level. Reading the meeting and convention reports is often very enlightening.

Are they in my way? No, not really, as the boxes are stacked out of the way.

Do they occupy space? Most definitely! But, this is a sacrifice I am (at least for the time) willing to make.

Ideally, I would want to organized them chronologically so I could easily find any issue quickly. Then, I'd find or make some display-type file boxes that would allow me to put them on shelves without the risk of doing that slick paper, squirt all over the place thing, or being at risk of a thousand volume domino effect if I decide to pull one from the group.

I completely agree with Mr. Baker.
I could argue the fact that even if you read them once when they were new and then you were done, you can always come back and re-read them. If you read each issue 20 times over 5 year period you will almost always find something that you didn't during the first read. They are always worth hanging on to . You never know if you need to look something up or just trying to refresh yourself on things , what ever the case. I personally feel that if you are serious about magic and always moving forward in it ,you should keep and read and then re-read the things from the past. Don't really know what to really say here. I feel that my and Mr. Bakers opinion may be falling on def ears here. But keep those mags. You may not want them now but somewhere down the road (if you are serious about magic) you will want them.
If not why were you browsing in the collectors section? You like and want them more than you know. But I will repeat this from my last post about it. If you do not want them DO NOT throw them away or rip them up.Atleast give them to a young magician coming up who has not yet read them. Pay it forward so to speak.

Find someone that is interested in them to give to them or sell to them!
I am very interested so if you could just personal message me!

I have a friend who was moving and recently threw a complete file of the Sphinx magazine in the trash. When you consider how much space they took up AND the fact you can buy a complete file, digital version, for $50, he was probably right. It makes me shudder when I think about it.

I think I've replied to a similar query in the past. I cut the articles that I want to keep out of the magazine, file them in loose leaf binders, and recycle the other pages. Old, "valuable" ones too. I don't think I have ever ruined something with resale value, but If I ran across an original copy of The Jinx or something similar I would set it aside and sell it off. I'm not a clooector of any kind.

I only keep Genii and MAGIC.

I keep mine upright, spines out, in magazine boxes (like at the library) on top of my book cases. That way they're out of my way but easily accessible when I want them, and they don't slide. Like this:



Plastic magazine boxes are cheap secondhand at thrift stores. Office supply stores sell economical packs of cardboard ones which work fine. An easy DIY solution is to take a (used) medium size USPS Priority Mail flat rate box and cut it with an exacto knife -- instant magazine box.

Mouth Tablets.