I worked at a used book store for a while, and we were emphatically a no-judgement zone. The only things we wouldn’t buy were things that wouldn’t sell (or that were actively dangerous; the boss didn’t wasn’t to buy The Anarchist Cookbook, not because it gave instructions on how to make bombs, but because it gave bad instructions on how to make bombs), and we made a practice of never ever talking down to a customer based on their reading habits.
A fairly common exchange for us was that someone would show up, deeply embarrased, with their dead father or grandfather’s collection of old Playboy magazines. We loved old Playboy magazines. They sell well, they hold value well. We wanted as many of them as we could. Sometimes someone would bring in old hardcore magazines from the seventies on up, and those were harder to sell, so we didn’t love those as much, but again, it’s not a conversation about the pictorial equivalent of gynecological exams, it’s a conversation about what does or doesn’t sell.
One time, a guy brought in his dead grandfather’s old smut collection, and it was pretty cool. Stuff from the 1950s with Bettie Page where it was ostensibly photography instruction magazines but the models were 95% nude women, with the occasional still life and ads for lenses or flash bulbs to lend an air of legitimacy. Literally French photography magazines from the 40s or before the war. Very impressive old smut.
Included with the collection, all of which we wanted, was a little pile of film reels in metal cans from at least the 1960s, and who knows how much older they might have been. They had hand-written labels on them like “Long Lake” and “Picnic.”
Now, we didn’t and couldn’t buy old film reels. But I told the guy bringing these in, “I’ll give you three guesses as to what’s on these reels, and the first two don’t count. I can’t buy them, but please don’t throw them away. There are some pornography museums out there, and you should contact them, because a lot of people in your position find this stuff, freak out, and throw it away, and then it’s gone forever, and that’s a loss to human culture, even if it’s smutty human culture.”
So I hope he contacted the pornography museum and that someone’s old pornography got preserved, because even the Library of Alexandria probably had a smut section.
Fun story!
I worked at a used book store for a while, and we were emphatically a no-judgement zone. The only things we wouldn’t buy were things that wouldn’t sell (or that were actively dangerous; the boss didn’t wasn’t to buy The Anarchist Cookbook, not because it gave instructions on how to make bombs, but because it gave bad instructions on how to make bombs), and we made a practice of never ever talking down to a customer based on their reading habits.
A fairly common exchange for us was that someone would show up, deeply embarrased, with their dead father or grandfather’s collection of old Playboy magazines. We loved old Playboy magazines. They sell well, they hold value well. We wanted as many of them as we could. Sometimes someone would bring in old hardcore magazines from the seventies on up, and those were harder to sell, so we didn’t love those as much, but again, it’s not a conversation about the pictorial equivalent of gynecological exams, it’s a conversation about what does or doesn’t sell.
One time, a guy brought in his dead grandfather’s old smut collection, and it was pretty cool. Stuff from the 1950s with Bettie Page where it was ostensibly photography instruction magazines but the models were 95% nude women, with the occasional still life and ads for lenses or flash bulbs to lend an air of legitimacy. Literally French photography magazines from the 40s or before the war. Very impressive old smut.
Included with the collection, all of which we wanted, was a little pile of film reels in metal cans from at least the 1960s, and who knows how much older they might have been. They had hand-written labels on them like “Long Lake” and “Picnic.”
Now, we didn’t and couldn’t buy old film reels. But I told the guy bringing these in, “I’ll give you three guesses as to what’s on these reels, and the first two don’t count. I can’t buy them, but please don’t throw them away. There are some pornography museums out there, and you should contact them, because a lot of people in your position find this stuff, freak out, and throw it away, and then it’s gone forever, and that’s a loss to human culture, even if it’s smutty human culture.”
So I hope he contacted the pornography museum and that someone’s old pornography got preserved, because even the Library of Alexandria probably had a smut section.