This Lifetime Subscription to 73 Magazine was purchased in 1976 for $99.

Wayne Green, the publisher, never was very clear whether "Lifetime" referred to the subscribers life, the magazine's life, or the publisher's life.

In 1999, the lifetime subscribers were asked to renew their subscriptions!

Fortunately, Wayne Green, a man almost true to his word, was still around and in charge of the magazine to intercede and correct the Y2K snafu.

Well, I guess an additional twenty years tacked onto the original "Lifetime" subscription should satisfy most folks.  Even if the subscription had stopped in the year 2000, four dollars per year for nearly a quarter century was still a good deal.

UPDATE:  73 Magazine ceases publication

The following information is excerpted from "The ARRL Letter", Vol. 22, No. 40, October 10, 2003, published by the ARRL.

==>73 MAGAZINE SAYS "73 AND QRT"

After completing 43 years of publication, 73 Amateur Radio Today magazine
is calling it quits. Plans to publish a joint October/November issue fell
through this week, and the September 2003 issue was the magazine's last.
According to self-proclaimed "El Supremo and Founder" Wayne S. Green II,
W2NSD, it was a simple matter of economics.

"After failing a last minute effort to collect on some larger accounts
receivable we decided yesterday to throw in the towel--that the September
issue will have to be the last," Green told ARRL October 9. "SK after 43
years of publishing."

The first issue of 73 was published in October 1960 from what Green--a
former editor of CQ--once described as "a small, dingy apartment" in
Brooklyn, New York. Since the summer of 1962, 73 has been based in
Peterborough, New Hampshire--Green's home state. The magazine was a
pioneer promoter of SSB, FM, solid-state, easy construction projects and
the marriage of personal computing and Amateur Radio. His interest in
microcomputing led Green in 1975 to found Byte, a magazine devoted to the
then-nascent and largely do-it-yourself computer hobby.


At the peak of its popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, individual issues of
73 totaled more than 300 pages of ads, articles and commentary. Heading
each issue was Green's inimitable "Never Say Die"--some would say
never-ending--editorial, in which he rarely missed an opportunity to tweak
the ARRL and his magazine competitors for their perceived shortcomings.

QST Editor Steve Ford, WB8IMY, says 73 published his first article in the
1970s. "I was saddened to hear that 73 has ceased publishing," Ford said.
"Wayne's excitement about the growing amateur FM repeater phenomenon at
the time was infectious."

Green's 73 editorials and regular round of personal appearances originally
concentrated on Amateur Radio and his ideas to improve, advance and grow
it. In recent years, however, they've veered into conspiracy theories,
cures for cancer, AIDS and other ailments and Green's proliferation of
book titles on those topics.

Green says he'll continue his essays on his Web site
 "for those subscribers who mainly bought the
magazine for them." He told ARRL that no definite arrangements have been
made yet about how to handle outstanding 73 subscriptions.

CQ Publisher Dick Ross, K2MGA, said he takes no joy from the passing of
73. "The loss of any publication serving Amateur Radio leaves all of us a
bit poorer," he said. "Thank you, Wayne, for 43 entertaining, informative,
sometimes infuriating, and always interesting years of 73. We'll genuinely
miss it."