Erotica buffs swarm to Swedish vintage porn auction

A collection of more than 4000 vintage porn magazines will be sold at an auction in Karlstad in western Sweden on Sunday.

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The collection includes several Swedish titles, such as Piff, Raff, Rop Hat, Pinup and Kavalkad, as well as French and American publications. Most of the collection is in extremely good condition.

"For the most part, it’s pretty tame, at least up until the end of the 1960s,” Peter Petterson, auctioneer at the auction house in Karlstad", told the Värmlands Folkblad newspaper.

The magazines are dated between 1950 and 1980. They were discovered in boxes in the storage unit of a deceased Karlstad resident.

It took Pettersson 10 hours to sort the magazines ahead of the auction. Older publications of this sort occasionally pop up at auctions, but Pettersson considers the sheer number to be unusual.

There are many erotic magazines collectors in Sweden, many of whom have contacted the auction house in hopes of purchasing portions of the collection. But all of the magazines will be sold together.

“Otherwise there’s a risk that people will tear them by leafing through them. And it would take forever,” Petterson said.

He hopes to receive 10,000 kronor for the entire collection, but believes that selling portions of the collection online could fetch ten times that amount.