I was under the impression that magazines could not be shipped media rate no matter what. I just had an Ebay seller inform me that you CAN ship magazines media rate if they are more than 10 years old. That's news to me and I'm wondering if he is right or wrong because I just bought some old magazines from him and he is insisting on using media rate to ship them. I don't want to pay the difference if he turns out to be wrong.

I say NO. Here's the link to the Domestic Mail Manual which states what qualifies: http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/373.htm#1056298

It is the advertising that disqualifies them for MM rates. Same wtih comic books.

I strongly suspect the e-bay seller is mistaken.  Seems to be an ongoing problem for E-Bay.

Periodicals cannot be shipped media mail so magazines as a whole are pretty much not allowed, advertising or not.  They would need to be rebound as a book publication to make it as media mail. Ask the seller for the part of the DMM that says 10 year old mags are allowed?

.1 General

Mailable matter meeting one of the specific eligibility standards in 2.2, and that is neither mailed or required to be mailed as First-Class Mail nor entered as Periodicals, may be mailed as Media Mail.

My postmaster answered with an emphatic NO.

I know when I tried to ship a bunch of old magazines media mail (I had no idea at the time you couldn't do it - I wasn't trying to cheat the system) I was told nicely but emphatically that I could not.  And these were magazines about Civil War re-enacting that had hardly any ads, and they were quite old.  Didn't matter.