History items of the weekend
The Centre d’histoire looks this week at the origins of Saint-Luc Hospital and some of the features it pioneered here.
The Gazette looked back to some interesting items including the final edition of the Montreal Star in 1979 and Mordecai Richler, just after publishing his incendiary article about Quebec in the New Yorker in 1991.
Radio-Canada also looked back at the end of the Star.
CE 15:12 on 2019-09-29 Permalink
I help my friend sell junk that he finds in the garbage (his blog, http://www.garbagefinds.com is worth checking out) and old copies of the last edition of the Star are a dime a dozen. It seems every Anglo in the city bought a couple and put it in the basement to be eventually thrown out by their kids. It was probably the paper’s best day for circulation!
Michael Black 18:27 on 2019-09-29 Permalink
I remember someone being on the radio talking about collectibles. And he said the most obvious things aren’t worth much, precisely because people keep them. So the last Montreal Star would be fairly common, but few would have thought to keep the second to last edition. It makes sense. It’s no different from any time people decide something is valuable, like Beanie Babies or comic books. But the things that nobody kept of course is what people want.
Michael
Blork 19:17 on 2019-09-29 Permalink
Following up on Michael Black’s comment, I recently read about someone needing to find a paper copy of the New York Times from September 11, 2001. Couldn’t find it anywhere. September 12 papers were all over the place, but nobody kept September 11 because the paper had already been printed before the attacks happened, so it was unremarkable.
CE 08:55 on 2019-10-01 Permalink
My friend and I have talked about this quite a bit. It’s not unusual to find hoards of things marketed as “collectibles” (Beanie Babies, sports cards, event memorabilia, commemorative coins) usually from the 90s. People were told they would only increase in value in the future but are now pretty much worthless. My neighbour thought she was going to put her kids through university with her Beanie Baby and VHS collection. I think the internet and eBay spurred it on. People were selling ordinary but rare things for lots of money in auctions that suddenly, everyone could see so people thought that other ordinary things would be worth lots of money in the future (which obviously didn’t happen).