HMS has kindly pointed out an advertisement for a 250GB hard drive which contains a copy of every Playboy since the first one, from December 1953.
Bondi Publishing have had the rights for digital scans of Playboy for some years but have rather failed to deliver since the first edition of the 1950s issues came out at the end of 2007. Our particular friend from Washington DC, R, very kindly gave us the 1950s box which included a facsimile of the very first issue (actual copies of which go for around $1,500), a cds of the issues and a book. The sets for the other decades failed to materialise so now they have obviously decided to package them all together in one handy unit. The individual 50s box set went for around $100 so $299.95 for six decades is pretty good value.
The Bondi product consists of double page scans of not particularly high quality. The centrefolds, however, are higher resolution pictures taken from the digital archive on the Playboy site. As such, if you want a totally accurate facsimile, they aren't quite right as the modern digital images are taken from the original negatives before re-touching.
As an example here we have Miss December 1959, Ellen Stratton as she appears in the Bondi Playboy reproductions. Her see-through knickers reveal a few ginger wisps that were re-touched out of the original printed in the magazine. Incidentally, this is why the Wikipedia entry on The Pubic Wars erroneously lists Melodye Prentiss as being the first centrefold to flash a touch of fur; the author of that sentence had obviously been looking at the digital version of the centrefold rather han the actual magazine.
We would be quite tempted by this product as the Bondi index and search functions are pretty good so it would be a very useful index. Nevertheless, Triple P likes having the actual magazine and has 397 out of the 650 or so issues.
