Ebay bargain: Burda Style 1990s and early 2000s magazines

 I only go to ebay occassionally these days because I try not to buy what I do not need. Well I went for a quick look and found someone selling 23 early 1990s and 2000s Burda style magazines. They were going for a starting bid of just £1.00 and £1.90 postage. The photos of the insides of each mag were impossible to make out so I decided just to risk it and put the minimum £1 on each. Then I pretty much forgot about them till a couple of days before when ebay sends me a message sayng I have been outbid - by 20p. So back to ebay I go and put a bit more on them all. I cannot choose which to go for since there are no decent photos and there is nothing on any of the Burda websites that is that old. I really do not expect to win them all and its impossible to know which one I would like best.

So the auctions end. I try not to look so I will not be tempted to add more bids which really I cannot afford but cannot help it. In the end I pay £1.40 for two for the magazines, £1.41 for one of them and £1.00 for each of the others. The person selling them very kindly combined postage for me to £15 and I now have 23 new ( old) Burdas.


And you know what ......... having flipped through them they are quite different to the English versions produced now. They have loads of sewing patterns ( as expected), knitting patterns ( rare these days), crafts and recipes galore. You do get the odd recipe, craft project and knitted item in the current issues but these ones have whole sections for crafts and recipes and include knits along with sewn items int he main section of the mags.

Well I was quite interested as well to decide I totally agree with the many bloggers who have written about the "golden age of Burda"because these mags are so much better than the ones I own from my subscription from 2014 onwards. I am so impressed I then went and bid on two more for 99p each. The problem with these was they were 2 different sellers so I had to pay the full postage for each making them £3 and £4.90 but still not terrible.


In fact I am so impressed by these old second hand mags I am seriously wondering if I should go through all my newer ones which I bought new, either singly when they came out, or on a subscription which I have now cancelled because I do not want every issue it seems, and maybe sell a few of those that I have found to be uninteresting.

Also interesting is the fact a lot of what is in these is currently in the high street fashion shops!

Anyway my main reason for blogging about this find is to let poeple know it may well be worth your while taking a risk and buying some very old Burdas.  

These older mags are not online. There are no digital patterns so you cannot use the internet as I quite often do like an index.This is the real downside when buying older magazines and it is definitely a downside.

If you buy a new mag the fact is that with a newer Burda you can visit Burdastyle.de, .com, .co.uk, .ru, .fr etc and look up for example #09/2017 and you will find out what is in that magazine. This is very helpful to locate something you know you own without having to trawl through every mag in your collection to find it.


With these I must literally sit down for a while - which is probably good for me (well being and all that) and I do not do enough anyway - and read them. Other than this small downside - because I do use the internet like a library and I do not usualy actually READ my mags - its well worth the small amount I paid for this massive pile of magazines and patterns.

I am very excited in fact and currently planning which to use first and what to make.

Bracken