TIL those underground newspaper reprint collections are mostly scams

I dropped $80 on what claimed to be a full archive of banned campus newspapers from the 60s and 70s. Turned out it was just poorly scanned PDFs you can find for free on some library websites. Anyone else get burned buying into these so-called "rare" collections?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_wesley28d ago

bro i feel you so hard on this. i got burned on a "rare" punk zine collection that promised never before seen flyers and articles. ended up being the same stuff from a university microfilm archive i could have accessed for free with a library card. what actually worked for me was just searching the specific newspaper titles on google books and archive.org. found way more complete issues there than any scam collection ever offered. also started following local historical societies on social media, they post original scans sometimes that are way better quality. your best bet is to treat those ads like clickbait and just dig through the free stuff first.

gavinm8928d ago

man that sucks, lmao. i got hit with something similar for a "complete collection of underground comix from the 70s." paid like $60 and it was just scanned from a public library's microfilm too. the quality was so bad you could barely read half the text. ended up finding way better copies on archive.org for free, even some full color pages the scam didn't have. it's honestly wild how these people just repackage public stuff and sell it like it's some lost treasure.