For over thirty years, from 1965 to 1987, my grandfather, Earl Apfelbaum, published a weekly column in Linn's Stamp News called "Apfelbaum's Corner." In the very first article, he said that his model for the articles were a series of car columns that had run in the Philadelphia Bulletin in the 1930s and 1940s called "Rolling Wheels," which were written by a local car dealer. Their purpose was not overtly commercial. Rather, the intent was to create what was really the world's first blog, an intent to entertain and educate and create customer loyalty by telling stories and writing about matters of interest to collectors. Earl rarely tried to sell anything in his articles. He told stories about his early days in the hobby and how collecting changed during his lifetime.
At one time in the late 1970s, collectors voted "Apfelbaum's Corner" as Linn's magazine's most popular feature and Linn's even offered my grandfather the option of having the column run for free (which if you knew the management of Linn's was quite an offer indeed). Earl didn't accept the offer because he wanted to be able to plug his company if he wanted to, and he didn't want any editorial interference. In 1985, we published The Best Of Apfelbaum's Corner and distributed over 2,500 copies at that time. Earl was in the forefront of many innovations. He innovated the self service mail shop and was a pioneer in mail bid sales. He died the same year that IBM marketed the 286 PC; so he never saw the Internet. But his column was really a blog, and he used paid advertising space to promote our company by entertaining rather than straight selling. You can read some of our favorites here.