Later moving to New York, Budd, in the early 1880s, opened a newsstand in Manhattan, where for a time he was recognized as the sole purveyor of old newspapers and magazines, also called back numbers.
Budd became known as the Back Number King or, more often, Back Number Budd, which was how he signed his checks.
He built his collection by buying papers from clubs, hotels and elsewhere at the per-pound rate that dealers usually offered to pulp them.
By the end of the 1880s, the collection had grown to more than 2 million copies, requiring, he found, a warehouse to store them.
There his inventory continued to swell — to more than four million copies in the 1890s and to more than six million copies by about 1905.
Persons:
Budd
Organizations:
York Sun, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, The New York
Locations:
New York, Manhattan, America, Greeley Square, Queens, United States, The New York Sun