For sale and want ads in the Letterpress Classifieds are intended for use by printers and collectors who need help finding and selling letterpress-era printing equipment or printing supplies.
We try hard to keep the Classifieds useful for our core audience. For this reason, our guidelines for what can be posted are somewhat strict. If you’re not sure whether your for sale or want ad is eligible, please review the following guidelines.
Free ads
Individuals who do not commercially or regularly sell letterpress equipment or products are eligible to post up to three free ads at any one time. If you need more space, combine items into one ad or delete your outdated ads.
Commercial ads
Printers, dealers, resellers, suppliers and others who commercially or regularly sell or sold printing equipment, or letterpress products or services, are eligible to post commercial ads for a fee that will support our free services.
The payment is required but the price is up to you: pay what you think is fair. Let the value of the item or service you are advertising be your guide (more info). Ads that appear to be commercial as defined above will not be published until we receive this fee.
Eligibile commercial ads are for individual items for sale, and not for general services or merchandise regularly available. Such ads as “We sell presses, rollers, and supplies” are better suited to the Printer's Yellow Pages.
Eligible items
Eligible ‘for sale’ ads are those for hand-operated printing presses; for equipment related to letterpress printing; and for items such as type, type cabinets, printing tools, and pertinent books. Ads for book presses, etching presses, board shears, and similar antique equipment are also welcome.
Not eligible
We decline ads for modern prepress, printing, and binding equipment, as it is of a substantially different nature from letterpress-era machines. Examples of non-eligibile items include photopolymer plate makers, Multigraphs, Kwikprint machines, KSBA cylinder presses, and the larger Kelly and Kluge presses that are regularly sold on sites for commercial printing equipment.
eBay auctions
We cannot accept ads that advertise active eBay auctions or stores. The volume of letterpress items on eBay is so great that our Classifieds pages would soon be overwhelmed by eBay ads, were we to accept them. The Classifieds at Briar Press is intended as an alternative to eBay for those who prefer more personal transactions.
