Original newspapers,archive papers,20th Century Times

One of the most commonly asked questions about Papers Past is '' Just where do you get all the papers from?'' Well, there is no simple answer as its not possible just to go down to the local wholesaler and buy in some more dates.
Over the years it has been a matter of advertising in trade magazines and generally responding to offers of stock from Libraries, Universities and Government Departments - all who had saved their own daily papers for reference and simply ran out of storage space or no longer had to keep the originals. So, when a run of papers was located, it was up to us to view them, negotiate a fair price and arrange the transport.
Infact this exact process happened last month when Sam received a phone call out of the blue from a lady who was selling a major run of bound volumes of The Times dated 1862 to 1962, it turned out that her father was a book dealer who had bought the papers in the course of his business and was now looking to sell them on.
We had a free day so immediately made arrangements to view them which involved a roadtrip from our base in deepest Cornwall. I have to admit that it was pretty scary weaving in and out of traffic on the M6 compared to our roads down here but we made it by lunchtime all in one piece.
The volumes were housed safely in a shed and store and were in pretty good shape, a little damage to some of the outer binders but the newspapers inside were really excellent and the age range of the collection suited our requirements.
We offered the full asking price and paid by cheque there and then. Its nice to think that the deal was done in a very civilised way, more of an old fashioned Gentlemans Agreement as it involved trust on both sides. Our finances had recently been bolstered by auctioning off one of the old newspaper warehouses in Kent so I knew the cheque would not bounce.
Within ten days the sellers had packed the volumes up on to seven pallets and trucked them down to Cornwall. Infact it was one of the easiest deliveries ever as five of the seven pallets were simply pushed directly in to place at the front of the St.Austell warehouse which meant that we only had to hand lift in two pallets worth. No problems though as I need the exercise.
So, all in all, a very good deal with both buyer and seller happy. But more so it has meant that we have been able to recontact some customers as some previous missing and unavailable dates are now back in stock. It also means that we are better stocked for 1950 and 1960 editions so that next year in 2010 we will be able to satisfy even more 60th and 50th Birthdate and Anniversary newspaper requests.