by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
"Check out this baby," Indio Jackson enthuses as he hands me some large sheets of paper encased in plastic. "It's a complete Rocky Mountain News well, almost complete I'm missing the front and back pages of the sports section, and somebody appears to have cut out one of the cartoons but it's the most complete copy you'll find anywhere in Japan!"
I look over the 83 year-old pieces of newsprint. They look remarkably well preserved for their age there is very little yellowing, and no creasing on the front page. When I turn the newspaper over to open the plastic bag it is in, Jackson quickly but lovingly snatches it from my grasp.
"Don't open it!" he howls. "You could damage the fine print!"
Fine, is, of course, just one level below mint condition in the ranking of quality of newspaper collectibles. These rankings matter. Just this past week, a mint condition copy of a Cincinnati Post weekday edition from January 7, 2002 sold on ehBay for 1.2 million Euros (US$17.6 million). The purchaser, Anonymous Bouyer, is a tin can salvage and recycling magnate from Mumbai.
"Pah!" Jackson snorted when asked about Bouyer. "Does he care about the smell of ink on newsprint? Does he have any appreciation for the feel of dead, pulped trees in your fingers? No! He's just in newspapers as an investment!"
Ariadne Jing-Tao, a dealer for Sotheby's of Tokyo, allowed that the market for newspapers had been dominated by wealthy investors looking for a safe place to stow their cash until the economic hiccup passes. But, she saw nothing wrong with that.
"Ever since the collapse of the newspaper industry," Jing-Tao explained, "The dwindling supply of what was once thought of as a disposable form of communications has become a collector's item, like illuminated manuscripts or Pez dispensers or gag toilet paper rolls. It's just the market being the market what are you going to do?"
Print journalism professors now teaching out of history departments tend not to be as sanguine on the subject. "The average issue of a New York Times," points out University of Inner Mongolia adjunct pontificator Maximus Ochblanitov, "is a much better newspaper than, say, the Detroit News. More informative, better designed, better written. However, because many more copies of the New York Times were printed than of the Detroit News, the News is worth' much more. Does that seem right?"
"Oh, academics can be such sillies, can't they?" Jing-Tao giggled. "Nobody actually reads the newspaper. Who cares what happened 80 years ago? The important thing is to own it. Academics sometimes they can't see the defoliated forest for the cut down trees!"
Jing-Tao collects herself when the conversation turns to newspaper counterfeiting. A flood of fake Seattle Post-Intelligencers destroyed the market just last year. Just last month, Sotheby's of Tokyo, itself, had to reimburse a buyer for an undisclosed sum, rumoured to be in the several millions of Euros (US$ millions lots), when a San Francisco Chronicle it had sold turned out to a cheap imitation.
"[UNPRINTABLE] Chinese!" Jing-Tao muttered. In China's inventory of obscure and obsolete technologies are several printing presses, which gangsters have used to create replicas of rare newspapers.
"We could carbon date each issue to determine its authenticity," Jing-Tao pointed out, "but, carbon is quite expensive these days, and, anyway, who would want to go to dinner with a non-metallic chemical element? Well, one with an atomic number below 50, anyway."
When the signs aren't obvious (such as ink that hasn't dried, lack of yellowing or Mandarin characters in supposedly English language publications), Jing-Tao claims to use the "chew test." This is exactly what it sounds like: she rips a small corner off a page and masticates it.
"Newsprint over 40 years old has a disgusting but unmistakable taste of iodine mixed with rotting bear corpse," Jing-Tao explained. "Some collectors think it tastes more like the rotting corpse of a polar bear, some think it tastes more like the rotting corpse of a brown bear. All collectors agree, however, that if the taste doesn't, at a minimum, make you gag and run for the washroom, the newspaper isn't authentic."
How did Jackson, a minor functionary in the Japanese Ministry of Pissing China Off, come by a first edition Rocky Mountain News? "It's been in my family for...three generations," he stated, a small catch in his throat.
"My grandfather left it to me in his will," Jackson said. "Before he died, he told me that he didn't want any of my 17 brothers to get their hands on it. They would just sell it to buy food to feed their 36 children, while I, among all the siblings only I loved newspapers enough to want to keep it in the family.
"I think his priorities were wonky, but he was my grandfather, and I loved him, dammit, so I'll do my best to fulfill his wishes!"