The New Yorker celebrates its 100th anniversary this week, and, despite the massive headwinds faced by its peers in the traditional media world, it remains one of the bastions of American journalism.
The magazine carries a rich history, featuring bylines ranging from Joan Didion to John Hersey to Truman Capote.
Founded on Feb. 21, 1925, by Harold and Jane Grant, the original prospectus provided to advertisers came with a promise to deliver “gaiety, wit and satire,” according to longtime editor David Remnick’s retrospective of the magazine’s origins.
Jane Grant said in a 1968 memoir, “We were not proud of our first issues of The New Yorker. … Failure hung all about us.”
Remnick recounted a story in which founding editor Harold Ross lost $20,000 in an all-night poker game — more than $350,000 in 2025 dollars — and nearly bankrupted the operation before it could find its footing.
Instead, after finding an additional investor, the magazine notched its first hit after publishing “Why We Go To Cabarets” by Ellin Mackay in November 1925, allowing the magazine to find its voice.
The first issue, released Feb. 21 and featuring Eustace Tilley, a caricature that has since become a quasi-mascot for the magazine, has emerged as a rare collectible blending the lines between collectors interested in magazines, history, journalism and literature.
CGC has graded a mere four copies of the first issue of The New Yorker. A CGC 4.0 copy sold for nearly $2,000 in April 2024 — one of the few sales of the issue at public auction records. That copy had a detached cover.
Currently, two of the four CGC-graded copies are at auction at Goldin, timed with the magazine’s anniversary: A CGC 4.0 copy as well as the single-highest graded example, a CGC 8.5.
With more than a week remaining at auction, the CGC 8.5 copy has received a single bid bringing it to $1,220, including buyer’s premium.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.