I’m pretty much convinced that they will reject them with extreme prejudice. There are literally millions of people with back issues of mags gathering dust, and who have tried every possible way to get rid of them. I couldn’t even get rid of our books at the local library when we moved, as they had placed a moratorium on donations.
I would be extremely surprised if you can find anyone, anywhere to take them off your hands.
Which is a cryin’ shame.
mmm
They usually have plenty of magazines already; either the office subscribes or the employees bring in their own magazines after they’re done with them. However, if the OP lives in a town that has a free clinic, they may want the newer ones. It doesn’t hurt to ask.
The library I volunteer at recently got a case of “Fit Pregnancy” magazines from an OB/GYN office. They were delivered in a box that had previously contained disposable vaginal speculums. :o We put them out in our bookstore a few at a time.
Speaking iof ebay, I just bought one issue last week. Had to replace one our new dog ate.
Other than that, I don’t routinely buy. I have all I want.
ETA: How I got all I wanted. In the pre-internet days, back when I didn’t have a big collection, I was at a used book fair. As soon as I got there, I found a seller that had a ton. I think he wanted some small but not insignificant amount for each. I set about sorting the ones I wanted, and budgeting how many I could afford. Alll my friends went to the rest of the fair. I don’t know how long I was there, but the place eventually closed. As I was getting ready to pay, the vendor decided it wasn’t worth his effort, and that he was just going to give them away. The fool!
So I got like 30 years of issues for free.
THAT is what they are worth on the open market!
Many years ago there was a Nat Geo with an article about a medicine ring on the height of lands in the Moose Mountains in south-east Saskatchewan. I lost my copy but would be interested in getting a replacement. Mid-70s, perhaps?
If I ran an office, the last thing I’d want is someone dumping years old mags of any kind in my waiting room.
They are future pieces of cardboard. That’s it. Recycle them.
As someone who both volunteers at a charity resale and cleans a doctor’s building, please don’t bother with donating them there. The former leaves them beside the dumpsters on good days and the latter tosses them. So, I agree that giving them to art or crafts students might be your best bet.
Believe it or not I donated literally hundreds of magazines (if not over a thousand by now) to a local women’s prison. I would have never thought of it but an acquaintance put out a request saying he was teaching reading and writing classes there and one of the biggest problems is the women had no access to reading material to practice on and even more important they needed to be exposed to GOOD writing; I’d think Nat Geo would fit that description.
You could sell them to Dopers. 
My parents saved a newspaper from the day I was born, and gave it to me when I was about 20 years old. It was fascinating to me to read the “news,” from that day. If you have the time to sort through them and give the month/year of birth to friends and family members for them or their children, they’d probably appreciate it. 
There’s a second hand bookstore near me that has an entire wall with NG mags piled to the ceiling, and they are three deep. So, approximately a billion of them. They have been there for 10 years. I asked if they ever sold them and the owner said no.
My experience with old age care homes is if the residents are with it, they want to read new mags, and if they aren’t with it, an old NG is not going to do much for them, but will be a pain for the staff who, just like the rest of us, won’t know what to do with them. And it seems kind of insulting to say, hey, old crumbly, here’s my old magazine nobody wants, but it’s good enough for you.
Recycling is really the best option. You’re not alone: 6.5 million people a month get a copy that is “too good to throw away.”
I collected the magazine and had over ONE HUNDRED YEARS of it. Every issue, with maps, from 1914 to the present. The library didn’t want them, nobody called about them on Craigslist. I’d spent a lot of time, effort and money on them but my folks needed to clear out their attic and I didn’t have enough room. They were in chronological order, and I’d even put them individually in plastic slipcover.
But a Doper wanted them, when I posted about the collection. They came halfway across the country to pick them up, hiring a small U-Haul trailer to put them in. The mags took up a lot of space. The Doper sent me a picture of them after getting them settled into purpose built shelves!
So I miss my magazines, but they have a fine new home, and didn’t end up in the trash.
Does this Doper run a second-hand bookstore near me?! What exactly does this Doper do with them apart from store them nicely?
I’m the crazy 'doper who drove halfway across the country for Baker’s collection. They are on high shelves in my dining room-out of the way, yet still accessible.
I think it’s completely awesome I have a complete collection of over a hundred years of National Geographics to peruse at my leisure. I, or the kids, or the husband, will randomly pull one down every one in a while and read it.
I wouldn’t have spent a ton of money on it, and I wouldn’t have taken a few years here or there in random order.
Thanks Baker, I still love them.
What was special about the May 2016 Yellowstone/American West issue?
I’d love to see a photo of this.
mmm
the public libraries libraries don’t want them … they get tons of nat geo inquiries a month…its funny tho we sold some in a swap meet and certain people would look for them for old ads that were supposed worth money …
if it wasn’t so expensive id say get them bound …
Oh no, if they are to be worth anything keep them intact. For the really old ones the ads are as much fun as the articles.
As for ads that are/were worth money, from the 30’s to the 60’s Coke would have the back cover, two or three times a year, and always at Christmas. Lots of Coke collectors wanted those pictures. Sometimes they’d just rip the back cover off, sometimes they kept the whole issue.
I would have had more magazines but they were getting too costly. Back to the point I had them they had the familiar oak leaf border, but there were different covers earlier, and those were hard to find.
As a kid, a friend of mine and I would help old people clean out their garages. As soon as they showed us the garage and grabbed hold of the door handle, one of us would whisper “Okay, is the pile of yellow going to be on the left or the right?”
Every single garage had stacks of National Geographics! (even back in the 60s!)
I’m so glad neither of us thought they’d be worth anything in the future, or I’d have a pile of yellow.
Collecting anything for the sake of collecting is of course fine, and is its own reward. That’s really different from “surely X must be highly valuable and desired by public institutions and the like.” According to my brother, I have an “impressive collection of books no one in his right mind would ever want to read, let alone pay money for,” and he is probably right.
DON’T CALL YOUR LIBRARY. Thank you.
You know why the planet tilts on its axis? Because Americans can’t throw away their National Geographics.