As I spent some time in the—ahem—reading room this evening with the December 1975 issue of National Geographic, I was taken back to my days in seventh grade Social Studies, and my teacher’s massive collection of National Geographic.
Along one entire wall of the intelligently-cluttered classroom, with the exception of spaces needed for the doors, was a massive, bare wood bookshelf that was at least twelve feet in length and at least seven feet high. Each of the five (I think) shelves was identical to the next, filled with hundreds of yellow spines, most in pristine condition, those not-so-pristine marked with telltale signs of white, the red banner advising of a map supplement or television special visible every shelf-foot or so if you looked carefully.
This, of course, was his collection of National Geographic magazines—every issue from January 1950 to the present day, which at that time was 1993, plus doubles, triples, quadruples, even quintuple copies of many issues. I would think that, if he’s still collecting, his collection grew some six feet since. He did have a few issues from before this period that were kept on a separate shelf for more careful viewing, but it was this massive acquiring that captured my attention.
And we were allowed to read them at will. I certainly did, anyway. My schoolwork suffered as I learned. 
Some years later, a friend of mine up the street let me use his bathroom upon one of our first meetings. His father had built into the walls of their half-bathroom some nice bookshelves that held knick-knacks, baseball memorabilia, and an impressive collection of NGM in its own right—I would guess four four-foot length shelves, stacked on top of each other. As my only real visit to this bathroom (I was thereafter invited to use one of the other facilities in the house) was a short one, I hadn’t had the opportunity to look. I was spoiled, anyway, by the first massive private collection I had ever seen—in fact, scratch that; I don’t think I ever saw such a collection in the library. Then again, I never really looked.
I’d love to have a few shelves filled with the last three-and-a-half decades, at least—they do have the CD-ROM, I’ve noticed, but there isn’t that same feeling as holding such an ergonomically-designed magazine, idly flipping through the parts that may be of interest at a later date, but not now, and looking closely at the old advertisements and the profiles of cities and towns; snapshots of a place soon to inevitably change after that date of publication, yet stay the same.
As it stands, it takes up 3 shelves on a bookcase in the basement. I reckon another 30 years or so and it might need more than one bookshelf. I’ll decide what to do with them then. 
I promise to give them a good home!