Mags-a-Million
Maria Soldevila discovers an East Village entrepreneur who feeds collectors' addictions.
IN A dusty basement in New York’s East
Village, Michael Gallagher, founder and
owner of Gallagher Paper Collectables, sits
and smokes—even though he is surrounded
by floor-to-ceiling stacks of highly flammable
magazines. His place is not easy to spot
from outside. A sign the size of a shoebox is
posted on the wall, at street level. Steep metal
steps take visitors down to the entrance, where
they are greeted by the unmistakable smell of
old paper.
Gallagher—neatly dressed in jeans and a black turtleneck—talks fast, as if he is always in the middle of something important. He finishes his cigarette and wanders through the eight rooms that hold about a million magazines, according to his estimate. He is probably exaggerating, but who’s counting? What you can see in every room is thousands of magazines, sorted by name and, roughly, by publication date. Gallagher says the order depends on his mood. “I change them all the time, whenever I feel like it.”
It is hard for Gallagher to remember when exactly he started collecting magazines. “I was born collecting,” he says. It was a hobby at first, and he did it because he loved the photographs and the drawings in their pages and could not afford the originals. After giving up on a career as an actor, he began selling old magazines twelve years ago. Today, if what he recently told the French magazine Paris Match is true, the business brings in a million dollars a year.
Collecting has become an addiction for Gallagher. His personal library holds such treasures as the extremely rare first edition of Minotaure, a French magazine with a cover by the famed surrealist painter René Magritte. This is one magazine that Gallagher says he would never sell.
But just about everything else is available, for a price. The store has one of the most comprehensive archives of fashion magazines in the world and fashion industry A-listers know it. Designer Marc Jacobs of Louis Vuitton recently called Gallagher from Paris and ordered a full 1970s collection of the French Vogue. David Lipman, chairman of Lipman, Richmond, Greene Advertising, wants all of the 1960s and 1970s Vogue Paris. To get an idea of what this means, Gallagher sells one 1960s issue for $50. A collection from 1920 through 1980 sells for $100,000. Donna Karan bought a set, and Gallagher has three more ready in case one of his rich and famous clients calls. “Magazines are like old baseball cards—you have to have them all,” says Gallagher.
To keep up with customers’ demands, Gallagher shops for magazines everywhere he can think of. He buys from retired art editors, from stores that are going out of business, from design academies and through Internet sites. The Web has contributed to his business in different ways. “Thirty percent of our sales are done online,” he says. “It’s also a great way to find magazines. If I’m looking for a particular edition, I post it on eBay and it’s faster to find it that way.”
Gallagher’s Web sites ( Vintage Magazines and Gallagher's Fashion) advertise not only his merchandise, but also Gallagher’s way of life. They feature a slide show of him being hugged by his celebrity friends—legendary photographers, models, designers, illustrators and art directors.
Many collectors share Gallagher’s fascination with celebrities. His collection includes more than 500 magazines with Madonna covers, more than 250 with Marilyn Monroe (including the Playboy cover) and a section devoted to Barbra Streisand, among others.
The 3,000 back copies of The New Yorker that the Web site advertises are kept on the top shelves in one of the back rooms. “The art is fantastic,” says Gallagher, but The New Yorker is not a big seller. “I buy it because I like it,” he says. The National Geographic collection is not conspicuously displayed, either, even though the Web site declares that copies from 1910 to the 1970s are available for purchase. The same is true of Fortune—although there is a room full of French Vogues, the collection of Fortune issues from 1930 to 1950 must be hidden somewhere near The New Yorker.
Some famous clients call Gallagher when they need to find archival material about themselves. Debbie Harry got in touch with the store recently because she wants to collect all of the old magazine pieces about her pop band, Blondie. Madonna has been sighted in Gallagher’s basement, too.
Of course, you don’t have to be a celebrity to shop here. Some customers descend those rickety stairs in search of birthday presents. If your friend was born in January of 1977, you can gift-wrap an issue of People with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson on the cover.
Catering to magazine collectors, however,
is the more profitable business. Gallagher
says that he declined a $2 million offer from
L.V.M.H. (parent company of Moet &
Hennessy and Louis Vuitton), for his collection.
“I can’t sell it for less than ten!” he
told Paris Match. “With one million, you’re
poor in New York!”