Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The December 1956 issue of Playboy featuring Lisa Winters as Playmate of the Month is a founding-era primary document that carries the additional cultural weight of the magazine's holiday issue — and in December 1956, that weight was considerable. By December 1956, Playboy had been publishing for exactly three years, having launched in December 1953, and the December issue marked a precise anniversary of the magazine's founding while simultaneously functioning as the year's most commercially important holiday number. The December Playmate in the founding years was a particularly carefully chosen editorial statement — the holiday issue was the highest-circulation and most-gifted issue of the year, reaching the widest cross-section of the magazine's readership and potential new readers simultaneously, and the Playmate selection for December reflected that heightened visibility. Lisa Winters' appearance as the December 1956 Playmate therefore represents both a specific entry in the founding-era archive and a document of the magazine's holiday identity at a moment when that identity was still actively being constructed. The full scope of the magazine's founding-era development and visual evolution is traceable through the Playboy magazine collection, which allows collectors to follow the publication from its December 1953 launch through its mature late-fifties expression.
December 1956 placed this issue at the midpoint of one of postwar America's most culturally confident and economically prosperous years. The Eisenhower era's settled prosperity was producing a new urban professional consumer class whose aspirational imagination Playboy was actively engaged in constructing, and the December holiday issue was the moment when that vision was most explicitly presented as a gift — to the reader himself, or from one sophisticated man to another. The specific combination of glamour photography, literary content, lifestyle aspiration, and the Playmate of the Month that constituted the magazine's December offering in 1956 documents a very specific mid-fifties cultural formation that would prove enormously influential on the decade's remaining years and beyond. The broader mid-fifties publishing landscape that formed the context for this issue is documented across the 1956 magazine collection, which provides cross-title perspective on where Playboy sat within the American magazine market during this foundational period.
The detached centerfold noted in this listing is a condition attribute that places this issue in the "reader copy" or "research copy" category within the founding-era Playboy collector market — a meaningful distinction from the attached-centerfold examples that command the highest prices. The Lisa Winters centerfold pages are present but physically separated from the binding rather than cleanly integrated, which is the most common condition failure in surviving early Playboy copies and the primary reason for the significant price differential between attached and detached examples. For researchers and completionist collectors whose primary interest is in the content — the Lisa Winters photography, the editorial content, the advertising, the holiday-issue identity — the detached centerfold is a condition note rather than an absence, and this issue remains a legitimate and historically significant primary source.
About the Publication
Playboy was founded by Hugh Hefner and first published in December 1953 from Chicago, initially self-funded and produced with minimal resources, its first issue featuring Marilyn Monroe establishing both its commercial viability and its cultural ambition simultaneously. Its stated audience was the sophisticated urban American man — educated, culturally curious, professionally ambitious, and interested in the pleasures that postwar prosperity was making accessible to a new middle class. The magazine's format combined glamour photography and centerfold features with serious literary fiction, cultural criticism, jazz coverage, and what would become the celebrated Playboy Interview. By December 1956 it had completed its third full year of publication and was developing the editorial and visual identity that would make it one of the most culturally influential magazines of the twentieth century. Issues from the founding era — the first five years — occupy the highest tier of the collector market, sought both for their visual content and for their primary source value in documenting the magazine's most formative developmental period.
Key Highlights Inside
- Lisa Winters December 1956 Playmate centerfold — present but detached — the complete holiday Playmate feature is part of this issue, with the physical separation from the binding noted as a condition attribute; the Lisa Winters pages remain with the magazine and constitute its complete Playmate content, available for research and completionist collecting purposes.
- December 1956 holiday issue identity — the year's most commercially significant and most widely distributed issue, the December number functioning as the holiday statement of the magazine's founding vision at the precise third anniversary of its December 1953 launch.
- Mid-fifties Playboy editorial and visual content — the fiction, cultural commentary, lifestyle features, jazz coverage, advertisements from 1956, and regular departments that constituted the non-centerfold editorial package of the founding era's holiday issue, all functioning today as primary documents of the magazine's developing intellectual and cultural identity.
- Note: Specific article titles, fiction contributors, and additional interior features beyond those indicated in the listing have not been confirmed from available sources. The highlights above reflect what is documented in the listing and Playboy's well-established editorial format for its founding-era December issues.
Condition & Rarity
The December 1956 Playboy with Lisa Winters carries a condition profile that experienced founding-era collectors will recognize as the more accessible tier of the early-issues market: the centerfold is present but detached from the binding, which is the most common condition failure in surviving copies from this period and the primary factor that differentiates this issue from the higher-priced attached-centerfold examples. The detachment means the Lisa Winters pages are physically separated rather than cleanly integrated — their presence with the magazine confirms this is a complete artifact rather than one from which the centerfold has been removed, but the physical separation affects both display quality and the premium that intact-binding examples command. The no-label condition is a genuine positive, preserving the December 1956 cover image without subscriber label obscuration. The overall condition details beyond the centerfold separation are best assessed through the provided photographs. The protective plastic sleeve stabilizes further deterioration without altering the original item. Collectors should approach this issue as a research-quality and completionist artifact priced and positioned appropriately relative to attached-centerfold examples.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
A founding-era December Playboy from 1956 — the magazine's third anniversary issue featuring Lisa Winters — is a meaningful primary source document from the period when the publication's identity and cultural significance were actively being established, and any surviving example is worth serious collector attention regardless of centerfold condition. If this particular issue is no longer available, the full Playboy magazine collection at OriginalMagazines.com is the most comprehensive single source for exploring other issues across the publication's long run, with particular strength in the founding-era decades that serious collectors prioritize. For anyone building a broader archive of mid-fifties American popular culture and publishing history, the complete 1956 magazine collection brings together titles from the confident midpoint of postwar American prosperity and cultural self-invention.