There are 50 Playboy magazines in Mafia III: Definitive Edition. Each pickup is a dated issue stored in the Collections menu. Collecting the set fills the gallery, but it does not unlock a Steam achievement. The fastest reliable method is to wiretap, search by district, and record the month and year—not to follow one long citywide sequence without checking the menu.
Prepare the map and your checklist
Collect fuses during normal missions, then activate junction boxes in the district you plan to sweep. Wiretapping reveals nearby magazine icons. It will not tell you whether the issue is upstairs, below street level, or behind an entrance on the next block.
Before leaving the safe area, open Collections and photograph or write down the issues already owned. A returning save may have magazines picked up years earlier. Duplicating the route wastes time and makes a 49-of-50 result harder to diagnose.
Read each marker as a landmark puzzle
Business interior
Check desks, counters, bars, laundromats, offices, and back rooms. Many issues sit flat and blend into clutter.
Industrial site
Search trailers, depot rooms, waterfront buildings, upper catwalks, and the safe side of a hostile compound after combat.
Residential location
Walk around the house for a rear entrance, porch, pergola, backyard table, or a small detached shack.
Vertical landmark
Look for exterior stairs and towers. The Frisco Fields issue at Duval Lookout, for example, is reached by climbing the observation structure.
When directly under the icon, rotate the camera and inspect the building outline. If no door exists at street level, widen the circle. An adjacent alley or staircase usually explains the offset.
Start with Delray Hollow and the home districts
Delray Hollow contains four magazines in the Prima district list. One recognizable landmark is the Everyday Laundromat; another same-game reference places an issue in a shack on an isolated island east of the district’s southern tip. Use the wiretap icons to resolve the exact approach in your current map.
Continue through River Row and Pointe Verdun while campaign routes are fresh. Search shipping offices, warehouses, bars, stairs behind industrial buildings, and rooms that open during racket work. The June 1966 issue referenced near the Louisiana Shipping Company is a good example of a marker whose stairwell access matters more than the street coordinate.
After each district, compare the visible collection dates with your written list. Do not merely write “Hollow complete” unless the icons are gone and the expected count increase is present.
Clear the central and industrial districts
Downtown locations reward careful searches of offices, alleys, upper floors, and service spaces. Complete or advance local missions before declaring an inaccessible interior broken. Southdowns and the French Ward mix businesses, nightlife interiors, residences, and less obvious back entrances.
Tickfaw Harbor contains five magazines in the published district route. Useful landmarks include Shooter’s Bar, a small two-story train depot, shipyard buildings and trailers, and a waterfront trailer. The dates listed for the five are October 1968, July 1967, July 1962, August 1962, and May 1965. Match the missing date to the landmark instead of revisiting all five.
Barclay Mills is another place where the icon can sit amid hostile industrial geometry. Finish immediate combat, then search offices and raised structures without the pressure of reinforcements.
Search Frisco Fields by property type
Frisco Fields has five issues in the same district guide. The most distinctive is the October 1968 magazine at Duval Lookout, found at the top of the observation tower. Another is inside a small lakeside house whose porch extends over the water.
The remaining published landmarks include a two-story subdivision house with a backyard umbrella table, a large home with steps down toward a pergola and lounge chairs, and a small shack among houses. Their listed issue dates include April 1967, March 1967, March 1965, and September 1965 alongside the October 1968 tower pickup.
Approach these as property searches rather than exact compass instructions. The issue may be on a floor, table, wall edge, or ground surface and can be hard to distinguish from ordinary paper until the interaction prompt appears.
Finish Bayou and story-sensitive access last
Bayou Fantom and remote edges are slower because road loops and water separate landmarks. Use a suitable vehicle, set one marker at a time, and avoid an improvised straight line through swamp terrain. Isolated shacks and small islands deserve special attention.
If a magazine points into a location used by a mission, advance that mission and return. Most of the 50 are available through ordinary exploration, but a completion route is smoother after the city and its interiors have opened. Keep a manual save before the final sweep.
Recover a missing issue at 49 of 50
Open Collections and identify the absent month and year. Compare that identity with a district-based location source. This single step is far more effective than replaying a 50-stop video from the beginning.
Turn on all relevant map filters and revisit the expected district. If the marker remains, inspect elevation and entrances. If it disappeared without the menu count, reload a save from before the pickup and try again. Verify the Steam files before considering any save manipulation.
Steam Cloud can synchronize the current state, but it does not provide a player-facing history of every pickup. Preserve a manual local backup before experimentation and do not delete a newer save until the recovered issue is confirmed in Collections.
Completion facts worth knowing
- The set contains exactly 50 issues in Mafia III.
- Junction boxes reveal collectible icons and require fuses.
- The menu identifies issues by date, which is the best missing-item key.
- Full Playboy completion has no associated Steam achievement.
- The Definitive Edition uses the same New Bordeaux collectible layout as Mafia III.
- A video is most useful for vertical or entrance ambiguity, not as your only checklist.
The reward here is the completed gallery and the historical material itself. If that is not interesting to you, there is no achievement penalty for leaving the set unfinished.
Sources and verification
- Prima’s all 50 Playboy magazine locations — same-game district totals, dates, and landmarks used for route verification.
- Playboy Magazines in Mafia III — independent same-game issue and location cross-check.
- All 50 Playboy video route — creator-first visual evidence for entrances and elevation; text here is not copied from the video.
- Mafia III official extended manual — primary collectible and wiretap context.