Kovels Antique Trader
Welcome to a new beginning, the launch of Kovels Antique Trader.
We’re delighted to have you with us on this exciting adventure that brings together two proud, pioneering brands to create a new collector experience, a new brand and a new monthly magazine that colorfully covers the antiques and collectibles community with vigor, insight and curiosity.
As many of you know, earlier this year, Kovels sold their assets to Active Interest Media, the parent company of Antique Trader. “It was time to entrust the Kovels brand to a new home,” founder Terry Kovel, 94, said at the time of the sale. “We couldn’t think of a better place than with Antique Trader, a publication like ours that collectors trust and enjoy learning from.”
Getting to this point has taken months and months of planning and work. We’re confident you’ll enjoy the results of that effort. Kovels Antique Trader is a full-color and stylish magazine brimming with the best of both brands. Our goal? To create a lively, informative and dazzling collector experience just for you.
We live in a visual world, which is why a key feature of Kovels Antique Trader is its visual approach to storytelling through photography and design. The antiques and collectibles world is big, bold and beautiful. Your experience with it should be as well.
If you were a subscriber to Kovels On Antiques & Collectibles newsletter, you’ll continue to enjoy the authoritative coverage you’ve long depended on, only in a 52-page magazine instead of a monthly 12-page newsletter.
Kovels Antique Trader continues a Kovels’ tradition: the Sales Report. This longstanding coverage of important auctions from around the country on an array of fascinating topics anchors these pages. You’ll also find the popular Collector’s Gallery, a reader-generated question-and-answer feature, as well as the invaluable Dictionary of Marks designed to help you better understand your new discoveries, and possibly your old ones as well.
Those features will be new for longtime Antique Trader readers, but we’re confident you’ll become fast friends. Sprinkled in among these standards are scintillating stories from a host of gifted writers – such as Pamela Wiggins Siegel, Wayne Jordan and Kris Manty, to name a few – who expertly cover everything from costume jewelry to the business of antiques, and vintage clothing to the latest collecting trends.
I’ve been editorial director of Antique Trader for more than four years. Before that, I spent more than 20 years publishing books on antiques and collectibles. By nature, I am curious, and I like to have fun. My promise to you is that Kovels Antique Trader will provide captivating work with style and substance. The magazine will showcase the traditional and the eclectic, the emerging and the conventional, the coveted and the playful.
We will celebrate the antiques and collectibles field. As with any good celebration, we will offer something tasty with every issue. You’ll savor expert insight, transcendent content, professional perspective, dynamic design and unbridled enthusiasm for where we’ve been and where we’re heading.
In all the revelry of the new, if I’m honest, there is some sadness. Terry Kovel and her late husband, Ralph, were newlyweds in the dizzying days of postwar America when they launched into the great unknown of an antiques and collectibles world shrouded in mystery. Together they informed millions, building a legacy built on curiosity and commitment.
Image courtesy of Kovels
I met the Kovels more than 25 years ago when I started in this business. I feel fortunate that we can still turn to Terry and her daughter, Kim, as we move forward on the shoulders of these giants.
Antique Trader
More than 66 years ago, Ed Babka published the first edition of Antique Trader in the basement of his Decatur, Ill., home. That humble four-page tabloid would evolve into a force in a burgeoning hobby. Ed died June 20, 2016, at the age of 88. I’ve been a part of what he started in 1957 in some fashion or another for a quarter of a century.
And yet, these trailblazers remain with us, wed to a new vision and a new magazine. There are sure to be bumps in the road as we explore the new, but there is sure to be much to discover and much to revel in.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please, drop me a line. My email address is PKennedy@aimmedia.com.
It’s going to be a grand adventure! We’re happy to have you along for the ride.
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