Amiga Power collection

[Peanutuk]

Sadly it's time to part with them . Hopefully they will go to a good home where someone can do something with them i.e. put them on the web.

Thanks.






On ebay :-


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1327205739

[Pyromania]

I am the current high bidder, I hope that I get this grand collection from you. As a long time Amiga user and as an Amiga developer that always loved Amiga Power and drove 3 1/2 hours to buy them back in 1990-1993 with Twisten. I lost almost all my Amiga mags when I moved from Los Angeles to Chicago and I am trying to build my collection back up. If I win I will try and find a way to convert all these great mags to pdfs for all to enjoy.

[CodyJarrett]

That's what I've been thinking about doing as well - converting the issues of Amiga Power into a digital format.

I've got a complete collection too.

[Peanutuk]

Well glad to know someone's interested. God knows hw much the postage to the USA will be !!!:eek

[Peanutuk]

What would people envisage a sensible price to be for these?
Or how about an unsensible price - have any similar collections ever been sold?

Thanks
:nervous

[Twistin'Ghost]

I have seen other complete collections of AP sold on ebay before (although none quite as special as this set!) and the pricetag gets pretty nasty.

[Peanutuk]

Can you give us some idea?

£50-60 ?

[Twistin'Ghost]

Sorry, I really can't remember. I only remember it was out of my price range (especially considering the shipping to the US and the fact that I have all but a few issues already).

[Steve]

I've just noticed the top bidder for your Amiga Power Ebay auction. Could it be the "infamous" AP reviewer himself Stuart Campbell. I think it is! :)

[Peanutuk]

Maybe , but I would have thought he would have had them all - what with all his bragging of having rooms full of video games etc. !!

And ofcourse because of the fact that he was, to some extent, Amiga Power.

[Mangar]

I'd just like to say PDF versions of ANY amiga magazines would be sweet. Where I lived during the early 90's they were hard to find. When I did see one I snatched them up. Even with the crazy price tag for the magazine. It was never sold around here for cover price.

[Pyromania]

If Stuart Campbell beats me at this auction I hope he will make pdf versions of all these great mags.

[Miggy2TheMax]

Definelty having pdf versions of amiga magazines would be awsome! I hope you win the bid Pyromania.

[Peanutuk]

I'm still not convinced that it is him!

I shall ask whoever it goes to what they intend to do with it. INfact I have abit of spare time at the moment so I may put an issue it myself.

We shall see

[Twistin'Ghost]

According to a phone conversation with Pyromania this morning, he emailed this guy and it is indeed Stuart Campbell. And he is as adament about winning the collection as Pyro is.

[Pyromania]

I guess Stuart Campbell took my threat of bidding over $500 US for the collection serious, I just bid over $400 and Stuart is still the high bidder, damn he really wants those mags. At the current price they are going for they are now selling for more than a used SGI Octane on ebay! This SGi workstation used to sell for over $80,000 dollars 3 or 4 years ago, now it is selling for less than those damn Amiga Powers, I really wanted them sob

Damn that Stuart


:mad

:shocked

[Pyromania]

I wonder if the mail I sent Stew made this auction go as high as it has. I was hoping he would back off and let me have them oh well. A copy of the mail I sent him is below.


To member: campbelluk
From member: pyromania

If you can come up with a copy of Puddy Squad for the Amiga I will back off on my bidding otherwise I will put in a bid for US $1000. I am a bloody yank with a bank full of dosh.

[Peanutuk]

Oh dear.....

That was a very silly thing to do - flag to a red bull!?!


:rolleyes

Anyhow , how are you sure it is him - has he actually said it is or why he wants them?

Oh and has he said want he intends to do with them? Will he make pdf's , if not then I hope you win!

[Pyromania]

He has not said what he will do with them, his e-mail was very vague.

[Steve]

I'm gonna watch this to the end. This is one of the fiercest bidding battles I've ever seen on e-bay. There's about ten minutes to go and it's on an unbelievable £353.00. Even I didn't think it would go as high as that.

[Pyromania]

********News Flash****************


Amiga Power sells for more on e-bay then an SGI Workstation that used to cost $80,000!

SGI link [ SGI Octane sold for $475]

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1326667710&r=0&t=0&showTutorial=0&ed=1012474090&indexURL=0&rd=1


Amiga Power collection sold for $497]

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1327205739&r=0&t=0&showTutorial=0&ed=1012586511&indexURL=0&rd=1

[Twistin'Ghost]

Whoa! The bloody yank with a bank full o' dosh takes the grand prize! Congrats, Pyro. I feel sorry for you having to explain this one to the wife...there goes the kids' Christmas this year! :laughing

Let us know how brutal the shipping from the UK is gonna be on this one. You may have to morgage the house... :cheese

And oh yeah: Stuart Campbell will forever hate you for this. :D

[Peanutuk]

*** Auction Relist ***

Unfortunately Pyromania was unable to cover the international postage costs, so the item has been relisted.

I have informed the other bidders and of course anyone else who is interested is welcome to bid. I have altered the infomation on the page to make the costs involved absolutely explicite for anyone unaware.

I have also raised the beginning price which I think is resonable considering the rate of previous bids.

Thanks for the interest.

The link is below:


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICommand=ViewItem&item=2000805315+

[LaundroMat]

Pyro, you were ready to spend a substantial amount of money on that AP collection, but you couldn't pay the postage? What was the postage bill like then? Double?

I can already imagine a certain Stu jumping extatically around the house after having checked his mail.

[Peanutuk]

Postage to the USA is at least £240 by Economy mail.

[Pyromania]

I do love Amiga Power but man that postage cost sure hurt, I think someone will have to live in the UK to take advantage of getting this fantastic collection. Postage was over $300 dollars US ouch!

[Andrew]

Hello

I read about people want to archive their mags into pdfs. I have a large collection of amiga format and various over mags (Amiga Format 22 to 101) what does archiving them into pdfs involve. I could put some on my website for other people to enjoy.

p.s Just bought an Amiga Power video for £4.00. Anyone got this?

[Peanutuk]

Hi,

Yes. I do have that video - forgot to mention it.

It's abit useless really doesn't tell you much. It is ofcourse by narrated by Matthew Squires who sadly died in a plane crash.

[Twistin'Ghost]

The video would make a nice mpeg, methinks.

As for making PDF's, ideally you would want the highest quality scans. I scan all mags, manuals, boxes, etc. at 300dpi, which results in pretty huge files. Call me a fanatic, but when I preserve, I preserve! And the cost of media is so cheap, why take shortcuts!

At this point, you can load each file into Adobe Acrobat and save the set as a PDF. There's a few little tweaks you will want to do in Acrobat, but it does a great job of compressing the data (although an entire 100+ page PDF of 300dpi scans would surely be excess city!) At work, we settle on 170dpi for newsprint, so maybe that's a safer setting for such big mags. As long as the text is readable, this should be fine.

Typically, they will be viewed with the width fit setting, but should someone actually want to read the articles they will no doubt switch to Actual Size; this is where having quality scans will make or break the project. And if you are going to save the scanned pages as jpegs, for heaven's sake, don't over-compress the images. This is the sacrilig that ruins so many scans of rare items I have acquired on the net, because the artifacting is horrendous when using default settings. If what I am scanning is really precious, I save with compression so minimal, image artifacting can't be detected (10-12 in Photoshop) or no compression at all.

My first PDF's were manuals from Atari 2600 games. They turned out pretty cool, too. I used tiffs, but I don't think it matters since the files get compressed when saving to PDF anyhow.

[Peanutuk]

It is a absolutely hugh task. The archiving of ZZAP64 is about to reach completion and that has taken years. [www.zzap64.com]

Certainlynot a job which should be taken lightly.

[Twistin'Ghost]

I completely agree with you. What might make more sense is to build a team for this task, all agreeing on using the same methods (resolution, etc.) and doling it out. Especially considering we are talking about 'Amiga magazines', not just one of them. Realistically, Amiga Power is probably the most in demand. The One is also quite popular. And Amiga Format, etc.

[CodyJarrett]

Amiga Action is quite in demand too. All over the world, when people run out of toilet paper...

[Peanutuk]

Cody:)

I see no point in making archives of Amiga Action or The One; they are wastes of space in my opinion as they are not really independent or critical enough.

Amiga Format would probably me the most useful [especially the earlier issues] as a reference source but not particularly entertaining to read.

Amiga Power has the quiality of writing together with a truly independent and critical approach. This in my mind is the most valuable archive.

If someone with the technical knowledge was to make the frame web site whihc otehrs could contribute too then I am sure it would be a success; for after al,l who has time to scan 65 magazines some of which are 130 pages long?

[CodyJarrett]

Yes, I'd be up for digitizing Amiga Power as well. I've already typed in all of their mini-reviews and top 100s.

I've got all the issues, including issue 0.

I think that as well as PDFs, it would be cool to have HTML versions of it all! I'm not sure how easy it would be to reproduce as HTML.

[Peanutuk]

Wouldnt HTMLing everything be a long and labourious task?

Time would be better spent pdfing - no?

[Dalai]

This would be a great undertaking. I wonder if there would be legal issues? Remember AP2...

Someone should write a mad character recognition proggy that can turn an image into HTML.

[LaundroMat]

As there are existing packages being able to convert paper documents to faithful replica's in Word (with the same layout etc), I imagine a paper->HTML converter exists as well..

[Tim Janssen]

The past two years (!) I have OCR-ed and HTML-ised over 150 reviews of Amiga games in six magazines (Amiga Computing, Amiga Format, Amiga Joker, CU Amiga, Zzap! and Zero). I have never bought a single Amiga Power issue.
Sadly, these files are all stored on my old Pentium 90. I am still trying to convert these files by cable to my new machine but Windows XP constantly mocks up. :(

[Pyromania]

Twistin'Ghost could you try and create a pdf from one of your Amiga Powers using Acrobat or Adobe Capture, if we all do one it should not take to long. Do one issue, tell us how you did it and how long it took what dpi you used etc. Then we each can have ago at a issue and before you know it all 65 will be done.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Hmmm...that sounds like a do-able plan. I have the weekend off, so as long as I can keep my friends from dropping by, I can see how long it takes to bang out Issue 0. Personally, I'd be better of getting a new HD, popping it in and getting that up and running, but maybe I can do both.

[Peanutuk]

I actually have the last two issues fully scanned into my PC but have never managed to get them on the net. TO give an idea of the quality I have included an image of one page - uploaded to the zone.
I know nothing of scanning so I ave no idea what dpi or whatever it is.

With this in mind there is no point scaning in issue 64 or 65 since I alredy have.

[Big-Byte]

I will ask my mate Mort (The guy who scanned in most of the issues of zzap64 for the zzap website) to come and give advice on what software to use etc..

I know that he has started re-scanning the earlier issues again to get better quality scans as he has got the process down to a fine art now.

He has also got most of the Amiga Power Magazines and Definately all the Zero magazines (I gave them away to him)

And to think a few years ago we used to take them to the boot fair and just give them away to anyone who wanted them.

[Twistin'Ghost]

So, I am curious...whatever happened with the auction of this Amiga Power collection? Were they sold? What happened with Pyromania and his end of the deal?

[Akira]

Campbell bought it for 300+ UK quid... WOW, what a price...

BTW, I dont think The One was useless, it was always funny to read it, I love it :)

[Dizzy]

You right Akira
The One was a good mag. I kind of Rocked. and they had better coverdisk than Amiga Power.
But Amiga Power was the KING of Mags

[Twistin'Ghost]

I heard Pyromania sent half the money for the collection before he heard what the shipping was and never got that money back. I think that is lame...

[Peanutuk]

Pyro didn't buy the mags in the end , which was dissapointing. We entered into an agreement which he couldn't fulfill but there was nothing underhanded....not that it's anyone elses business.


:rolleyes

[Pyromania]

Was it in fact the famous Stu of Amiga Power editor fame that finally bought this fab collection?

[Peanutuk]

Well nobody bought them in the end.

The hhighest bidder didn't. The second highest didnt them but only, ofcours, after promising that he would buy them and he third bidder didnt want them.

Which brings us to the question - WHY BID?!?!?!?!:mad

Anyway - they are back up on ebay. I won't be putting them up again after all this agony and dissapointment. I never thought that they would be this hard to sell!