Why is my former stomping grounds not covering this story? I had to read it over on Boing Boing.
Hello, Jason Scott here (historian guy). I saw that the 250,000 fanzines up for sale on ebay were taken down. I took the step of looking up and contacting Mike, the guy who put them up, and spoke for a while.
Apparently he had gone to the ebay sale as a last resort after contacting a number of universities to donate his collection. And, as luck would have it, his auction was spotted by a worker at the University of Oregon, who have contacted him and offered to take the collection whole.
So, the collection has found a home, and a sale to the highest bidder (not always the greatest way to divest decades of collecting and collating) is no longer necessary. Great news.
Of course, the Knight Library news site nor does the University’s news site have anything.
It’s obviously not a huge story, but still print-worthy (as it’s quite a collection).
Update on 2/13/05: The collection is actually going to the University of Iowa.