The Peter Steele Project

I never saw the original pictorial of Type O Negative lead singer Peter Steele that appeared in Playgirl, but I heard all about it. The well-endowed rocker didn’t realize that the magazine’s readership was mostly male and was incredibly embarrassed by his photo shoot after her learned that his nude photos would be viewed mostly by men. (He also received no end of shit from his band mates about this fact.) Despite the strong male readership, I’m sure the number of goth women who purchased Playgirl skyrocketed the month his pictures appeared.

Original issues of Playgirl from this month are quite rare and expensive, but the shots were so popular that Playgirl decided to run Peter’s photos again in a compilation issue. This “rerun” issue contained the same pictures as the original issue, but is a lot easier to find. So easy, in fact, that I started noticing it popping up in the store’s gay mag packs.

For the uninitiated, mag packs are back-issues of porn magazines shrink-wrapped together and sold as a bundle for less than the cover prices. This method allows magazine publishers to make money off past issues they didn’t sell and customer to get a pack of nudie magazines at a cheap price. Generally, more recent or desirable magazines are placed on the outside of the pack, visible to customers, while magazines inside remain unseen. These “center mags” are usually foreign publications with models who don’t always measure up to western porn standards (missing teeth, visible scars, open herpes sores, etc.)

As a clerk, I was privy to when our new gay mag packs came in and always looked for the Playgirl that contained Peter Steele’s pictorial. I’d find them quite regularly (the compilation issue, not the original), bundle three of them into a $6.99 pack, use my employee discount to purchase them and then resell them individually on eBay.

I didn’t make a ton off these sales, but buying a magazine for $1.17 and reselling it online for $20+ is a hell of a profit. I kept doing this until eBay began requiring Playgirls be sold in their “adult” section. After this happened, no customers could find my listings (since most people don’t search eBay’s separate adult listings) and I stopped making any money selling the issues.

It was fun while it lasted.

R.I.P. Peter.