Jared Shares Some Pictures

 

    Huge fan of the "The Thing" movie , and the book is great as well. My brother Jared is crazy about the movie and is recreating a room full of period office equipment in his house. Alan Dean Foster had many movie novelizations in the 80's and 90's, and Outland was unfortunatly one of them. Our facebook conversation:

 

 

My first edition of 'Outland' by Alan Dean Foster. I think they only made the one edition.

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  Major Asselin This is cool. The movie was terrible though.

  13 hours ago · Like
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  Jared Place You say that again and we are not brothers! Blasphemy. Sean Connery was, is and always shall be, The Man.

  38 minutes ago · Like
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  Major Asselin Sean Connery will always be the reason why i keep a beard, but that movie made my nuts hurt.

  7 minutes ago · Like
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  Major Asselin If you tell me Zardoz was a good movie, then i think we may have words.

  7 minutes ago · Like
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  Jared Place Connery is cool but he made some damn awful movies.
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• Later I posted this on his wall:
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Jared Place I stand corrected. F-ing Zardoz...

5 minutes ago · Like

Island Book Hunt & Pick Ups

     I had to be on Sanibel Island to help out with some merchandising and visit some stores on the island before noon. Using Android Navigation, I found that there was a Goodwill on the island in a little shopping plaza. I had to stop by. Quite possibly the smallest Goodwill ever. Maybe 600 sq. feet of floor space.

     This is the Sanibel Island book selection. The guy who was behind the counter followed me around and talked to me for most of my visit. I told him I have a blog and he said taking pictures was okay by him. I learned that a long time ago.. always ask before taking pictures. I only found one book here that was a fantasy or sci-fi book, so I felt obligated to buy that. One other book looked interesting....

 

     It's like they knew I was coming. Treating an alcoholic was right next to two beat up late printing Harry Potter books with water damage.

 

I had to go to a store back off the island, and there was a Goodwill book store in the same parking lot. My luck! I have talked about Goodwill Book Stores before and how they mark their prices up needlessly. If you click on the picture, you can see two clearance racks outside.. I shopped primarily from those and found a few books.

     Two little sections had fantasy and sci-fi, and they were all priced as marked. Some of the prices did not make sense, but, if the book looked new and in good shape, it was eight bucks or thereabout. Good thing I'm more interested in the old crappy books. I did see some interesting books that I may go back and get. A Fred Saberhagen book club edition was mixed in, and I wanted it, but had to stay within my daily budget of $10. I spent the most at this store, $5.85, and got the least amount of books. Sigh.

 

     I had to stop a little further down the road at a 711 and talk to a manager about some beer stuff, and within walking distance is a paperback exchange. I've been here before, she does not let me take pictures inside which sucks. I did not buy anything here as the selection is pretty slim. If you want some romance novels, this is your place! Floor to ceiling smutty barn romance here ladies.

 

 

     My last stop of the day was at the Book Rack, my favorite national chain paperback exchange. This place is crazy.. and tends to be expensive. Only open four days a week for about seven hours, so I had to get in-get out.

     Oh my god. I say it every time I walk in. My lord the inventory they have on hand makes Books-a-million cry and go to their room with no dinner. Sham on you any other book store that does not look like this. Literally seven feet tall, six or seven shelves total in the shape of a square with chairs in the middle. The lady here knows me, she organizes the books by series, alphabet and by awesomeness. I could spend all day in a place like this. The downside? Price. If the book looks nice, she puts $4.50 on it, period. If it looks old and shitty, .50 cents. If it is part of a series, its $2.50 which is pretty nice if your fleshing out you're Dragonlance books or something...

     ....and she has over 75 Dragonlance alone, and more in the back when it runs low. My budget dwindling and me having picked over all the best books, I only got to spend $3.00 here. There was a time about seven or eight years ago I would spend $80 a week in this store alone. I could do it now with all the books I'm missing, but again, I have this fictional budget of $10.00 per day, so I can buy something every day if I want to. Why the budget? Well $10 a day is around $300 a month, which is much more than many people spend on books. My budget is high and if I went over it, I would be straining to buy gas and food! Anyways, let's recap:

      Alright from top to bottom:

1) Rainbow Mars - Larry Niven
2) Starswarm - Brian Aldiss
3) Man from Tomorrow - Wilson Tucker
4) A Private Cosmos - Phillip Jose Farmer
5) The Ring of Ritornel - Charles L. Harness
6) The Eagle and the Sword - Harvey K. Schreiber
7)  A Small Armageddon - Mordeon Roshwald
8) Talon Silverhawk - Raymond Feist
9) Being a Green Mother - Piers Anthony
10) Star Trek Log Three - Phillip Jose Farmer
11) Star Trek Log Two - Phillip Jose Farmer

     Not a bad day. Picked up 11 books, 9 of which were new to my collection. Nothing very valuable, but some stuff I have not seen, or seen in a while. Tied to the constraints of my budget I could not go crazy at the Book Rack and their vast inventory. Maybe some eBay money will come in soon and I can put that back into the system and go nuts. My cat Artax helped me put the books away. Yes, Artax from the Neverending Story.



Kyle's Books are Pretty Nerdy

    
   A good friend of mine, Kyle, invited me over his house last night to comsume a few beers. Most people know when they invite me over, I typically bring the beer because i get it at a doscount.. or most times for free.

     We talked about growing vegetables and all sorts of boring things when the subject of course gravitated towards books. Kyle is the guy who bought the storage unit books with me, and most of the books he owns are first editions, so he has some good stuff. Just in the page above I see a first edition Dragonlance hard cover (I want that), some Dahl first editons which go for crazy expensive, and the list goes on.

  
    The next shelf over botgh amazes and delights most Gen-Xers with both a Delorean and a Powerglove. It's so bad. Looking down and you will see...

     About 1/10th of Kyle's NES collection, and some other random bullshit he has found at garage sales and goodwill.

     This shelf is right accross from his bad, or guest bedroom bed, or whatever. Tons of first edition paperbacks, some great Piers Anthony novels and SNES games to round off a good shelf. I could spend all day taking pictures of Kyle's bookcases, as he has many.. many more, but I'm trying to keep this a book blog after all. Speaking of book blogs, I'm going to be doing a big post later on with my travels today. Hit some good stores and some good areas today!

Tuesday Goodwill Pick Up.. on a Tuesday

    
     I had the fortune to work today with a close friend of mine that works at the same company, and we went down to Fort Myers beach to execute some displays for the upcoming World Sand Sculpture Competition. We had some time to burn before picking up someone for a lunch back at the office, so I suggested we hit the Goodwill off the beach.. of course.

     We saw absolutely nothing, as I had been here several times before in the past month, I was not optimistic. When I say not optimistic, I mean we were screwing around doing nothing, looking stupid. Right before we left I told him to meet me outside, as I was just going to check the books real fast, and they don't have many being that a Goodwill Bookstore is nearby. I saw the same things I saw there last week. The same smut-romance and Danielle Steele. And then..

     ...a first edition 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke. Very good condition, early printing. A quick search of eBay tells me it's work between $30 and $50. Score indeed. It was marked as two dollars for some reason which is high even by Goodwill standards. I was happy to pay it. I showed it to my friend waiting for me in the car with my eBay app open on my phone and he just shook his head.

    
     I have the habit of discounting stores I've been to recently. I think I'm going to re-think that mantra. What if I have been missing books and other people have been picking them up? I'm being paranoid I know, but this proves my theory, as I would have never over looked this little gem. Oh, and that is the pumpkin I carved for my son on Sunday, seemed fitting to stage a photo-op with it being Halloween and all.

Robert Asprin & Thieves' World

     Robert Asprin was introduced to me by way of Elf Quest. I read a Piers Anthony book as a youngster, and in said book, the two worlds crossed- Elfquest and Xanth. I had to have more Elfquest, wolf riding and so on. I went to Theives' World from there, and was introduced to authors like Poul Anderson and Marion Bradley. Sadly, Robert Asprin died in 2008, but the series lives on. Lynn Abbey who also contributed to Elf Quest and Myth Adventures has taken the reins and done well with it.

    
     Above is a selection of different books written by him that I just took a picture of. The early covers are the best in my opinion with great detail and an old look about them. First editions don't go for very much on eBay but are pretty collectible in the right circles. I have several Thieves' World hard covers, but honestly, I was too lazy to unearth them from under another pile of books I was trying to organize. I tried to get my friend Kyle to help me, but he was too busy drinking beer in my kitchen with a $200.00 first edition coaster under his beer.

Yes, that is a sock Coozy, as my wife was doing laundry and it was closer than the one in the drawer by the fridge. Under it is a Sword of Shannararararara first edition from an earlier post i did. Kyle, you are a man of many talents.

Blog Name Change Failed Title Pictures

     The name change was an easy one to make, I picked out more pleasing-to-the-eye fonts which now i can't remember what they are. I had Adobe Photoshop open and decided to try out some other blog titles and see how they look... (Click for larger image, or slideshow)

    
     This one was by far one of my favorite. Test audiences loved it, but people thought the blog was really some idiot who likes books. Wait, yeah okay i get it. now.

     Almost went with this one. Book whoring is to Game Chasing, as Macdonalds is to Burger King.

Blog Name Change!

The Fantasy Bibliophile ----> First Edition Fantasy

 

     Sorry about the confusion, but i might as well catch this one early before i get some consistent visitors. My wife brought up the point that Bibliophile and Pedophile sound similar. I thought about this before, but after i made the graphic and title and sent the link out. It is a good point that was brought up, and not everyone would know what bibliophile means.

 

     So to the new visitors, sorry, change you're book marks, more updates to come.

First Edition Hunt: The Princess Bride

      Much more rare than the hard cover (FACT), The Princess Bride is a book that you see at it's lowest, around $400.00 for the hardcover with dust jacket. I found my copy in Englewood Florida at a thrift store that sells the contents of bought storage units. He had about 5 boxes of books for .10 cents each.. so I bought everything he had. Later I saw this book, and knowing about the hardcover and never owning one personally, I did some research.

     The original print run of the first edition paperback is less than a thousand copies. The cover was considered controversial, had nothing to do with the book at all, and was used without knowing what the actual book was about. The run was stopped early, and reprinted in a second edition with a bland cover and no red writing inside like the hard cover. This is known as the "Two Week Edition", and is the rarest of all Princess Bride Books. I sold my paper back on eBay about a year ago (the pictures you see are ones I took) for just over $200.00, which was very low, but the information about the print run is not really knowledge you can get from a 10 second google search, so there ya go.

Edit and Price Guide 1/12/16

1) Princes Bride first edition hard covers are extremely valuable. Perfect condition with perfect dust jacket, $650-800. Signed, $1000-1500 depending on current market. Used conditions hover right around $300-450. Don't be fooled by crazy high ebay prices.

2) Several special editions of The Princess Bride have been offered over the years. Leather bound green type editions from the 90's can go as high as $500 in sealed/new condition, and were available at B&N and Booksamillion as limited editions, five copies per location. Eaton press can go anywhere from $700-$1000. There are several other examples and variations of leather editions printed, signed and so forth, and to be honest, I don't have time to go through them all and list them.

3) There is no use arguing with me, the first edition paperback had a MUCH lower print run, were easily damaged and faded, and very few exist today. This makes me them more rare, maybe not as sought after, but definitely more rare. If you are a hard core collector, knock this one off your list. Current value is right around $200 for a used copy and $500 for mint/near mint. You will not find a copy of this book in mint/near mint. If you are selling this book on eBay and you are using this page a guide, bear in mind that mint means new.

**Small Update** 7/6/19

Over the years I've answered some questions on Reddit, written quite a bit on the subject for other blogs and publications about this edition. If you have any questions or concerns on your copy, shoot me an email or leave a comment and I'll see if I can help you, or provide what you need to get your copy validated and sold. The "2 week" copy story I wrote about on several websites has finally taken off, and the information I obtained from my mother's publisher all those years ago is being taken seriously; this book treated as the very rare and collectible specimen that it is.. well, it's quite refreshing. 

Flea Market Pick Ups

     The flea market is about ten minutes away from my house, but is only open on Saturdays and Sundays. There is a similar one in Bonita Springs about forty minutes away, so I may go there as well next month.

     I have had good luck in this particular swap meet before. It's not uncommon to just walk around randomly and get lost as the lanes are small and the booths are not in any order whatsoever. I followed a sign for beer (which I tend to do), and it lead me to the store above which had about six to eight booths rented out for books. One guy owned it, he said his name was Chris. I think I have ran in to him before at garage sales but I could be mistaken about that.

     What beer did I have you ask? A dark one. It was still early morning after all and I had quite the walk in front of me.

 

 

     This is the picture I took when "Chris" came up to me and told me all the books are $1.00 each, or six for $5.00, even the hard backs. I asked him about the Fantasy/Sci-Fi, and he pointed me to a booth dedicated to just that. All the books seemed to be in good shape, just dusty. Having walked around and seen three other places similar to this with absolutely nothing I wanted, I knew I would be buying something here.

 



    
     I picked out twelve books and stood where I saw Chris earlier for him to collect my money.. except he was not there. I waited for a while, about 15 minutes really. I sipped my beer and walked around and spotted something special in a different place, and made my way back to Chris where he appeared and took my money. I spent $15.00, which is a lot for me anywhere. I did not haggle the price which I so frequently do.

 

     There are my three bags of books, and my wonderfully cold 20 ounces of liquid love. This particular plywood table was empty, and so were the next 30 or so after that. Season in Florida hits hard, and when it does all the tables and space at the swap meet will be rented out. Right now, I'd say the whole thing is about 50% empty. At this point I was wondering if I had sprained my ankle, so I decided to leave and take pictures of my haul.

 



     Fourteen books total. Not bad! I'm not normally buying hardbacks as they take up too much space, but I really could not resist.. (From Left to right, starting at top left)

1) Tanar of Pellucidar - Edgar Rice Borroughs
2) Nine Tomorrows - Issac Asimov
3) Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov
4) Prelude to Space - Arthur C. Clarke
5) A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.
6) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - James Kahn
7) The Many Worlds of Science Fiction - Ben Bova
8) I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
9) A Science Fiction Argosy - Damon Knight
10) The Robot Novels - Isaac Asimov
11) Magician - Raymond E. Feist
12) Spearwielders Tale - R.A. Salvatore
13) Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone - J.K. Rowling
14) The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov

     Two stand out here in my opinion.

     The Harry Potter book was the one that I saw while waiting around doing nothing, wanting to check out and leave. I, robot was the first book that I saw when he directed me to the books in the first place. He had six dollars on Harry and of course I, robot was a buck. Yes, the harry potter is a first edition, American printing, possibly a later printing based on the price on the flap: $22.95. The first edition/first printing copies are $16.95 on the flap. Just awesome condition and will photograph well for eBay. Yes I will sell it, I own two earlier printings already. I can probably get $75.00 for it. I, robot is a book club edition (BCE) version of the first print, and was put together around 1965. The book is just in perfect condition. I could not believe my luck when I saw it. A quick search of eBay and the lowest I saw this book was at around $60.00. Score!

    I picked up the other books, most of which are BCE's, just to round out the five-for-six dollars thing Chris had going on. I always buy any early white cover Foundation novels because they sell really well as a set and I know a guy looking for them. I don't have any excuse for the Indiana Jones book; I just really like early movie adaptation novels. They were long, had full color photos in the middle and were just cool for me as a kid. Had to get it. Did I mention that beer was cold?

   
     My son helped me take the pictures. He loves his dad's books, especially ripping the back covers off. Overall a successful trip, picked up two scores worth about $120.00 together, one of which I will sell to make back my money on this trip. Bonita flea market next week?