Our continuing growth brings us to Magnifique and a few comments about documentation versus guessing.

I used to collect comic books, and as anyone involved in that hobby can tell you, the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide is an indispensable tool for building your collection. It not only tells you what the comics are worth (although that's debatable), but who published them, the dates of publication, and how many issues were published.

Oh, how I wish there was something like that for old men's magazines! A lot of information I can gather about the magazines is logical deduction. For example, I know that this mag was published by Sampson Publishing & Distributing Co. I also know that the address for Sampson is the same address for Delilah Publishing & Distributing Co. They're the same company! Why did they use two different names? Here's where we get into logical deductions, or guessing, take your pick.

Sampson and Delilah sometimes published magazines with the same title. For example, both published a magazine called "Eve", complete with different logos and different (alrthough about the same quality) content. Where they differed is that one version was usually more cheaply produced than the other.

Take this issue of Magnifique, for example. Although I don't know if Delilah also published a Magnifique, I get the distinct impression that this issue was thrown together as quickly as possible. The pages are in no particular order and in fact have no page numbers. The indicia is divided between pages 3 & 54. There's no actual date listed anywhere (although it looks like early 1960's, based on hair, clothing, and makeup.) I scanned the issue and labeled the pages exactly in the order they appeared in the book, so you can see how confusing this gets.

The pictures are sexy, of course, and the one or two cartoons present are ones I've seen in other Sampson/Delilah magazines. All-in-all, not a bad issue, if a bit confusing.