Earlier this year, an antique shop owner in town was retiring and winding down her store. I picked up a pretty good batch of vintage magazines at a nice price on the last weekend, and went back after work on Monday, the final day, just to see if I had missed anything.

Well, turns out I was recognized and she had an impressive stock of vintage magazines in back that never made it out on the floor. She made me a great offer and I took it. And on top of that, she had a collection of various things she had cut out of other old magazines — random photos and illustrations from ads, stories and features — that she had started on for an unspecified “girly project” but decided after a while that it was too much work. She had this particular collection stored in the cover/lid from a case of office copier paper and it was filled to overflowing. She offered it to me for five more bucks and I said yep.

I still haven’t made it to the bottom of her cutouts, but so far have found a plethora of full, intact vintage ads, and also many partial ads where she was only interested in the primary photo or illustration and saw no need to cut out or keep the rest (headline, body copy, logo, etc.). The image below is one such example.

I am Spartacus.

I took one gander at the photo and thought, “Hey! That kinda looks like a Maidenform ad!” I was right. From 1961, according to a search on the Interwebs. This is from well before I was born, much less staring at bra ads and the lingerie section of JCPenney Christmas catalogs.

So what does this mean? A few things.

I dig boobies.

I dig advertising.

I own a bunch of old magazines, some going back to the late-1800s, with a bunch of great vintage ads in them. And also a bunch of scraps.

I should continue posting them on this website of mine because there’s gotta be a few people out there who also dig this vintage advertising stuff.

And here we are.