Are Old/Antique Newspapers Worth Money?
Are Old / Antique Newspapers Worth Money?
Here’s a question from one of my viewers in America. Old newspaper. Are they worth money, are they worth buying and selling, are they worth seeking out?
The answer is YES to all those questions!
Let’s talk about values. You can buy a good antique newspaper, really interesting and collectible fro around £5 ($7) right up to the most expensive newspaper ever sold at €700,000!
Old newspapers though don’t just report history, they have actually made history. One of the best examples I can give is the one where Dr David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary who was lost in Africa was discovered by Henry Stanley from The New York Herald. The two met with the famous greeting ‘Dr Livingstone I presume’
Stanley and Livingstone traveled together through Africa with Stanley interviewing Dr Livingstone as they went. Livingstone recounted a first hand experience of how he’d witnessed Arab slavers massacring Africans. This was all part of the East Africa slave trade. The stories made it back to America and Europe. The public were outraged and demanded something be done about it. The British stepped in and threatened to blockade the island of Zanzibar and close down all of its economy if the Sultan didn’t close down the slave markets… Zanzibar was the centre of the trade.
The Sultan agreed and the East Africa slave trade was brought to an end…all thanks to a newspaper story!
I’ll also tell you how we came to call newspapers ‘Broadsheets’
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Cheers
David