Fortune, Volume 1 Number 0

As has happened recently with increasing frequency, the idea for this post came from a reader with a question.

In this case, I had a comment that I had omitted Fortune from my flurry of first issues and that also that she had a substantial run, beginning with the first issue, that she would like to part with. I advised her that the cigar band issue and the Disney issues bring the most money and that, if she would make the effort, she'd do best by listing the magazines individually on ebay.

Since this blog is not a retail site, nor do I accept advertising, I will not post her name though I'd be happy to put interested parties directly in contact with her.

That being said, I remembered that I had an issue she didn't- the "dummy" issue, Volume One Number Zero from September 1929 and that it also contained separately within, a two page letter from the publisher, essentially a prospectus. The light bulb then went off in my head that this would be an excellent post so- here it is.

The notion of publishing a magazine with a price of one dollar at the outset of the depression seemed incongruous. While the market crashed in October, between the mock-up of the dummy and the January 1930 first issue, it still seems somewhat of a risky venture, since the bulk of the populace that could afford such a hefty price tag were seriously contemplating suicide at the time. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and Mr. Luce got away with it!

So here is the magazine, half of which is blank inside, as I said, a mock-up "dummy" issue. I've also included the letter. Pardon the quality of the cover image, It is a large magazine that does not fit into my scanner so I took it with a digital camera.

A very interesting piece of magazine history indeed. A guess of today's value is about $300,

though one has not come up for sale for quite some time.

Before I forget, my article preceding our new book on Franklin D. Roosevelt has just appeared, through the courtesy of editor Rick Shenkman on http://www.hnn.us/ . You might want to have a peek at my other historical obsession. . Quite frankly, my greatest goal in writing the book is to, once and for all, get out the long sequestered truth about the man that will afford historians a better ability to interpret his true place in history. Perhaps the "smoking gun" that has been sought for the last forty years will finally come to light. This should be a very exciting few months