This collection began its life as a box of LGBT magazines and chapbooks that was left on the side of the road for trash collection in Burlington, Vermont in November of 2018. It was found by the brother of Anna Pachner of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was subsequently given to her. Wanting to bring visibility and accessibility to the materials, Pachner created an Instagram account with an archival tone titled "BoxOfVintageGayZines" to highlight excerpts of the magazines and their citations. The Instagram account generated significant interest and as of March 11, 2020 has 560 followers. Pachner decided to cease posting new content on the account following the donation of this collection.

In order to make physical interaction with the materials possible, Pachner, with the help of Katie Rauth, co-curated an archival exhibition titled "The Philadelphia Queer Elders Project," along with a series of programming at the Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia in November and December of 2019. The exhibit space was arranged as what Pachner and Rauth imagined the living room of the previous owner of the collection to be, with the magazines available for browsing on a coffee table, and notable excerpts from the magazines photocopied and placed along the walls of the gallery. Ephemera, including pins, bandanas, t-shirts, cassette tapes, matchbooks, and chapbooks from local queers and on-loan from the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives were on display in glass cases in the space. The accompanying programming included an "Archival Dive Workshop" where queer intergenerational writers used the materials to reflect on their own gay histories, as well as an "Intergenerational Community Quilting Bee" at the John C. Anderson Apartments, where participants worked on a quilt that was featured in the exhibit. The quilt included patches created by the attendees that featured names of elder queer community members, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The exhibit and accompanying programming endeavored to bring together disparate generations of queer people by creating a space that allowed for bonding and interaction with the materials and each other, thereby reducing some of the dissonance between younger and older generations.

Anna Pachner is a queer attorney and artist, with a background in LGBT family law, living and working in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Katie Rauth is a queer multi-disciplinary artist and member of Vox Populi Gallery living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Before being the subject of The Philadelphia Queer Elders Project, the materials had long belonged to Donna Lescoe, of Starksboro, Vermont. Originally from Southern California, Lescoe moved to Burlington in 1972. She attended the University of Vermont, where she founded their first Gay Student Union. She collected these materials over many decades, acquiring them through various means including through subscriptions, by one-off purchases at radical independent bookstores, and as gifts from friends. Lescoe knew these materials were important to gay history and held onto them for decades because of this. After unsuccessful attempts over many years to find an archive that would take the materials, they were finally put out for trash collection.