In March 1974 magazine collector Danny Posner entered Foyle’s bookshop in London’s Charing Cross Road to get his fix of the smell and feel of old magazines which Foyle’s kept in a big cardboard box in their rare books department. But this time there was to be disappointment.
“We aren’t selling them any longer“ he was told. “Why?” “Because people keep going through them and we end up with a box of
confetti”. So Danny sought satisfaction at a stall in Earlham Street, Cambridge Circus in the heart of London’s theatreland where Rocky the stall owner sold a small variety of mostly American magazines. The stall was pitched in front of a pornographic book shop which now stood empty after a police raid.
“The landlady's looking for a new tenant said Rocky.” She offered it to me but I can’t afford it”. It was an opportunity and Danny was quick to recognise it. He had been a lifelong collector of magazines and at the time headed up a London Public Relations agency, Posner Cox, and was involved with rock bands (Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Cliff Charles and Colin Smith, Rocky Rhodes Show etc). Here was a place which could provide evening band rehearsals with somebody’s girlfriend to run it as an old magazine shop by day. He took it , called it The Vintage Magazine Shop and started trading in May 1974.Fellow collectors pooh poohed the idea – six months was the most they gave it . Supposedly there were only a limited number of eccentric comic and magazine collectors in all the land – but the shop took off attracting an international clientele of collectors, picture researchers, interior decorators and publishers. As well as magazines the shop spread its interests to include posters, photos, programmes, newspapers and comics and just about anything printed. Growth followed. First it expanded into the shop next door where Celebrity David Baddiel records that his one and only job in commerce was working for Vintage knocking down the party wall between the two shops. The press found the whole concept a scream. Formerly this stuff had been rubbish, now It was commanding high prices. They wrote endless screeds about it.Within 5 years Danny had opened eight Vintage Magazine shops including one in San Francisco. A separate company Vinmag Archive was opened to look after the special needs of commercial Clients the shops continued under the name Vinmagco, Both continue to this day, but Vinmagco was sold by Danny in 2003 . Meantime Vintage Magazine Company, now in its 37th year of trading and headed by Danny and his wife Angela, bought a 10,000 sq ft Warehouse in Homerton, East London which provides space for its huge collection of memorabilia described by The Times newspaper as ‘ an Aladdin’s Cave’. Singer Mel Torme called it ‘the best shop in the world’. David Bowie built his collection of Eagle and Private Eye through Vintage. Seeing is believing but visitors are temporarily discouraged while refurbishing work Is undertaken to heighten the shopping experience. Give it 3 or 4 months. Buyers should know that although the Internet has caused confusion in its liberal use of the name Vintage Magazines there is only one Vintage Magazine Company and its here in Digby Road, Homerton still run by the man who started it all 37 years ago. And his wife now with 30 years experience in the business. There are lots of collectors’ stories to be told about the Vintage years so watch this space for more.
