If you are one of those people who are still angry at their moms for throwing out their collections of baseball cards, Barbie dolls or comic books, I feel your pain. Now add to the list that stash of Playboys you – or, uh,

your brother — had stashed under the bed. Well, maybe not all of them are valuable, but the premier issue certainly is. The December 1953 copy with the Marilyn Monroe cover sold for more than $5,000 in 2000.

These are pretty impressive figures when you consider that the entire undertaking was begun in 1953 for an original capital outlay of $600, and by a fairly unlikely founder at that. Hugh Hefner was the product of a strict Methodist upbringing who, at the time he came up with the idea for his magazine, was an editor at “Children’s Activities” magazine. He saw the publication from the first as a unique mix of good writing by top writers, interesting interviews of high-profile figures, humor, and, of course a healthy serving of sex. The original title was set to be “Stag Party,” but there were last-minute threats of a copyright lawsuit by an outdoor magazine called Stag; the search for a new name led to the suggestion of “Playboy” by co-founder Eldon Sellers, whose his mother had worked for a car company by that name.

The debut issue, in December 1953, though it is undated, as Hefner wasn’t sure when — or if— a second one would follow. It had Monroe both on the cover and as the first centerfold — not that she posed for the magazine. Unable to afford an elaborate centerfold shoot, Hefner went to a local calendar company and bought the nude pose of Monroe that had been taken in 1949, before she was famous.

With a cover price of 50 cents, the magazine was an instant success, selling about 54,000 copies. What would be the enduring rabbit head logo was designed by Art Paul, Playboy’s first art director, who saw the rabbit as “the playboy of the animal world.”

True to his stated aim, Heffner presented literary fiction by such names as Vladimir Nabakov, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates, Ian Fleming and Margaret Atwood, as well as extensive monthly interviews with notable public figures, including Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, President Jimmy Carter, who he made his famous statement “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times,” Bill Gates, Miles Davis, Michael Jordan, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono — in fact the January 1981 issue containing the latter’s interview was on the stands at the time of Lennon’s murder. In 1968, Hefner got Andy Warhol to do a cover. But there was always the counterbalance of the voluptuous — though semi-innocent women — who included, from the 1960s alone, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Kim Novak, Brigitte Bardot, Jayne Mansfield and Ann-Margret.

A key player in the sexual revolution, Hefner used his magazine as the lynchpin for a Playboy empire—with international Clubs staffed by bunnies, a cable network, an Atlantic City Playboy Casino and a Playboy Jazz Festival begun in Chicago in 1959 and still held annually. Overall, Playboy came to represent a lifestyle: the swaggering, sophisticated, swinging “good” life, embodied in Hef himself.

In addition to the magazines themselves, there is a wide range of merchandise available to the collector. From the Clubs, there are keys, passes, ‘bunny money’, matchbooks and cocktail stirrers, from the casino come roulette chips, dice, tokens and playing cards. And there’s much more: pinup posters and calendars, ashtrays, beer pitchers, mugs and glasses, pottery crocks, money and tie clips, key chains and jewelry, Zippo lighters, and a whole run of Playboy Playmate jigsaw puzzles packaged in cans.

To find out more about Linda Rosenkrantz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.