Out of the Suitcase #53: ​Collecting rare Chaosium papers and paperwork

Chaosium President Rick Meints shares stories from a life-time as a collector of all things Chaosium.

I love buying Chaosium-related items that come with their original mailing envelope, because they were often custom branded, especially for Chaosium's in-house magazines. 

For example, here's the customised shipping envelope that Wyrms Footnotes #2 came in. It features artwork from the Nomad Gods game. The first three issues of Wyrms Footnotes (14 issues in total, 1976-1982) also came with little envelopes containing several counters from White Bear and Red Moon. 

Whilst looking at auction items on Ebay, especially Chaosium's boxed sets, I often go through all the pictures of the contents because every now and then I spot something like a catalog, advertisement, or flyer that we don't have in the archives. 

For example, in true, "I didn't know that existed" fashion, I spied a single piece of paper included with a recent item on eBay. Luckily it had an ok "buy it now" price tag. 

You used to be able to subscribe to both of Chaosium's "in-house" magazines, Wyrms Footnotes and Different Worlds. Sadly, Wyrms Footnotes ended after 14 issues in April of 1982. Chaosium stated it ended due to being another victim of "an era of economic severity" – times were tough and it was just too expensive to publish it. While I have all 14 issues of the magazine (1976-1982), as shown in the first photo, I never thought about how Chaosium handled cancelling subscriptions. Fortunately, I now know how they did it:

-- This was how Wyrms Footnotes #14 was mailed out in the Spring of 1982, complete with the subscriber notice and the latest Chaosium product Catalog (vol. 1, no. 2) -- 

Chaosium included a one-page "subscriber notice" with each copy of Wyrms Footnotes #14 mailed to subscribers. They offered three ways of converting your $2 per issue of subscriber credit. You could buy other Chaosium products, switch your subscription to Different Worlds, or just get a cash refund. To help you choose other Chaosium products they included the Spring 1982 Chaosium catalog. Of course, you had to mail in the enclosed coupon to let your wishes be known. Thus, most of these subscriber notices were consumed and discarded in the process. 

This is the only one I have ever seen. I'm happy Ray in NJ never used his: