Well, this is great. A well-connected source e-mailed us early this morning with a tale of Condé Nast drama on House & Garden's last day.

Apparently, an (unnamed) senior editor at the magazine told staffers that they could take down and keep one of the vintage framed H&G covers in the office lobby for themselves — and the collection stretched back to 1907.

The general consensus was that as parting gifts go after sudden mag shutdowns... it wasn't too bad.

But after Condé Nast higher-ups got wind of H&G covers being given to staffers, a last-minute order was given to building security to search all H&G employees for them — and to confiscate on site.

The embarassed security staffers literally searched every staffer's box, bag and filing cabinet for the precious, precious magazine covers.

Speculation at the mag ranged from CN being so cheap that they didn't want to lose the (admittedly expensive) frames to the need for the company to maintain the older copies for the archives.

Does anyone have additional info? Let us know.