Collecting Automotive Sales Brochures

Ask any gearhead about their automotive dreams and, most likely, it will include a large collection of muscle cars, including some exotics and even a Shelby Cobra thrown in, for good measure.

But unless you are made out of money or can boast about winning the lottery, it shall remain a dream.

However, if owning a car collection is the equivalent of "unobtanium," you can still own part of those dream cars on paper. All that entails is automotive sales brochure collecting!

Automotive sales brochures—like those usually found in dealer showrooms—make great collectibles, and the entry fee is nothing compared to owning the real thing. Brochures take up very little space, they are fun to look at, and you can acquire them whenever you have a few extra dollars to spend.

You can arrange them by year, marque and model, and you are not limited to cars. You can develop a very nice collection of advertising brochures for pickup trucks, motorcycles and pretty much anything that was sold in numbers at an authorized dealer. And why stop there? You can even develop a nice collection of lawnmower advertising brochures! Just kidding. Then again...

But as with anything involving money nowadays, the Caveat Emptor rule fully applies. Yes, the old adage "Let the buyer beware" is something to keep in mind, especially when you get into older, or more obscure, advertising literature. I am not talking about manufacturer-licensed reprints, which are not only affordable but sometimes as close as you can get to an original. I am talking about the chance of running into some crook selling photocopies via an online auction site.

One word of caution; collecting automotive sales brochures can become addictive, but compared to other addictions, this one can be considered mild. Many collectors, after having completed a collection of literature for their vehicle of choice, go on to explore other marques or models, and sometimes the rarer the vehicle as well as the rarity of available printed media, makes such task—however challenging—even more desirable.

Just like with collecting cars, motorcycles, or anything else, there is no "right formula" or specific guidelines as to what to collect, hence my tongue-in-cheek comment about collecting lawnmower sales brochures. And there isn't really a way to determine their value, other than what other collectors are willing to pay for a given item. But basic rules, such as originality and overall condition, can provide a baseline for determining a price.

Collecting automotive sales brochures is a great—and affordable—way to spend time visiting garage sales, car swap meets, or motorcycle shows, while at the time helping preserve a little automotive history for future generations. Plus you can forge good friendships with other collectors, whether they live across town or across the world.

So an automotive sales brochures collection may be the right hobby for you!