By and large most publishers don’t see the value. My one is digitising its picture archive but we’ve got god knows how many years of Car, Classic Cars and MCN and other bike titles to do. For a nerd like me I could spend entire weeks in the archive. Original Ghibli II Cup press kit was a great find. Original shots from the first test of the BiTurbo for Car, of it getting very squirrely in the snow...
I managed to pick up all of Evo for free apart from the first two years, and I did spend £300 for Car 1977-2015-ish. I could never tell my wife about the latter but it’s an invaluable resource, especially for the era of car I write about - as you can imagine there are loads of books about pre-1980 cars, and countless on Porsches and Fords, but very little on most things. It’s also great for weighing up the industry context. Best investment in my career I ever made. One of the most interesting nuggets I pulled out recently was that the Alfa Romeo 145 was considered for the 2.5 V6 Busso engine. I know there’s been aftermarket conversions (including a 3.2) but how mad would that have been, especially as it didn’t get the GTV rear suspension?