First Edition Hunt: The Silmarillion

First American Edition

     Having found a second first edition paper back for my collection I decided to do a quick article and add some pictures for people who need help identifying their own copy in the wild. Two different first edition hard covers exist, the one above is the American edition. Below is the Euro hard back and the first page describing it as such. You can identify either edition by the opening page.

     They are both first editions, but for some reason the American version sells for a little bit more. I have seen "okay" copies of the American edition sell for over $100 almost every time i check up on it. Again, opening publishers information is to the left. The top picture being the American, the bottom the Euro. Both hard covers have book club edition equivalents so be careful for that. Still fun to own, just not worth as much.

 Paperback first edition

    
     The paperback had a huge printing run based on the demand of the hard cover. First/first copies of this book are still fairly common, but the reprints are insane. About the book itself, i think it got out around this time that his son Christopher kind of wrote pieces of the book so it would all tie in to things he found laying around his dad's desk after he died. After the initial sales died down after a year or so, it never really picked up any momentum. With the rise of the movies reprints cheaply made in abundance make this something are currently looking for on eBay.. and the prices drive up accordingly. You can get about $25 in decent condition. I guess the next question is.. "Major, are these your books?" Well, yes, all but the euro.

My copies on my coffee table.

     I try to use all my own pictures for the website and I have pretty much stuck to that until this post.. I never owned a Euro version so I got the pictures from an eBay page of a known rare book seller with his permission. Just a little FYI.

Paper Back Super Score: Best day ever?

 

 

    When i woke up this morning I had no idea it would be such a great book hunting day. I decided I take my $10 and go to the Book Rack after work, which is right near my house. I've been here as mentioned in one previous post, where i wrote about the sheer selection and how friendly the owner was with me. What an awesome and depressing choice to make.. I'll explain.

 

 

     She told me she is selling the store to a family member as soon as i walked in the door. I asked her how much, and she responded that it was under $10,000. Mind you, there are at least 250,000 books on the shelves in this store. My dream would to be own a store like this, but alas, it was not meant to be. She talked with me for a while about the years gone by while i made some choices in her huge Fantasy section. Of course, I got the best deal and found a few pretty cool things I must have overlooked before. Remember what these shelves look like? It tough to find something.

 

 

   Yeah, it's a lot of books. Anyways like I was saying I found some gems I had overlooked before:

 



    

     All first editions! Not a dud in the bunch. Highlights are The Silmarillion first edition paper back, ringing in at around $30, Star Giant coming in at about $30, and Mind Mix at around $50. The others clock in at around $10! Fucking awesome score. I made my purchase and started to leave when she chatted me up again saying she has a box under her desk she saves for people like me who appreciate books. Having come here for years, once in a great while she would pop a rare book on me she knew i could not resist. I wanted to see what was in this box. Behold!

 

 

     Click the image to enlarge and zoom. Some pretty cool rare books in here. I quickly got eBay out and looks some of them up.. all around $15-$20 or a little higher. Price as marked around exactly what they were worth. She told me for sitting down one last time with her she would let me have my pick at $1.00 each... Drum roll please.

 

    

     Some of the books its hard to put a value on because they don't show up for sale often, but from the top left you have a War of the Worlds 1953 print first/first with the authors name in pink. (super rare). Inside/Outside by Farmer. Spotted on eBay for around $50. Ernest Hemingway first edition paper back, awesome condition and i could not find another like it for sale. I estimate it at around $50.  A Norton book, Galactic Derelict reprint with a seriously cool cover but near worthless. I love the book, and i love the art so it was a home run for me. Arthur C. Clarke Expedition Earth First/First.. sells for around $50.00 in the absolutely mint condition it is in. I mean it's just perfect. All the books are actually almost flawless. Recap: Spent $15 (over my budget!) and got around $250+ of rare science fiction and fantasy shit. Best day ever. Or is it?

 

      

      Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. The book. With pictures. You guys know I live for this shit. This book is worthless, but has a full page black and white picture of Blaster-Master in it. This is some serious fucking shit ladies and gentlemen. Score of the decade. Random memory: My brother and I when going to the beach would put mud in our hair and say we were the kids from Mad Max. Yeah. I paid more for this book than the War of the Worlds first edition paperback. Why? Because fuck you for asking, that's why.

 

 

These are mud children whom my brother and I would imitate at the sand bar.

Special Delivery!

    
     So.. I'm watching the movie Soldier, the kind of Side-quel to Bladerunner on Bluray while doing this update. Great old movie that is kind of dated, but has great elements that apply to any film. My wife says Kurt Russel is a hot piece of man flesh in this movie. Anyways- I got home the other day and there was a box at the front door.. and lo and behold.. it contained an awesome array of books!

     God bless my mother for sending me such a huge horde of books. She has been hitting some local book stores when she goes in to town and looks for things for me until she could fill a box to mail it. Included is the Sci-Fi mags from the 60's that she had sent me pictures of prior, that I had posted for your pleasure. I see some great vintage Trek stuff mixed in there, always great. A rare and not bad condition Dune first edition paper back! This makes two in my collection.




   The pages have some wear from what looks like some heavy reading back in the day. One of hardest to find paperbacks of all time really, (edit: in great condition) with the exception of The Princess Bride paperback. Everyone should have a mother like mine, and if you don't, this is proof you are an asshole. Here is some pictures of the guts:

     Another oddtity of note is the Isaac Asimov boxed set. I have seen such things on Amazon and Ebay over the years, but have never really got one for some reason. I'm lazy, or cheap, or both. I peeled the sticker off all these books, and they each said ten cents, so I dont feel bad about my mom spending too much money buying them.

   Awesome retro 80's cover art with a bald guy. I love it. One of the books I have already in both print and edition: The Caves of Steel. I think this may have been a box set box at one time that got seperated at birth or does not belong in this set at all. The text is not right compared to the others and the year is different. It's listed on outside, so it seems like a complete set.

Wrapping up, a great haul. Mom, you did good. Dune first edition paper back? Yes.

Jared (my brother) Strikes again.

  

So Jared contacted me on facebook and took a new picture of his Executioner/Mac Bolan collection and shot it to me. I think he just got a few more so this is not entirely accurate, but you get the idea. A few first editions that are actually very valuable are peppered in there for good measure. We got to bullshitting and he had some patches for his leather working company that he said he needed rendered but really had no way to pay me. As a great brother who is awesome and loves to help out, I told him not to worry about it and got down to designing it one afternoon.

 



  
     He was sending me messages when I was working on it insisting that he procure some sort of payment, but I told him all i would take is obscure Zardoz pictures not found on Google Images.

    So.. watch what you ask for I guess.

Mcgregor Garage Sale Saturday

     Last Saturday I agreed to work to trade a day off during the week, on the way back down Mcgregor blvd where I live I spotted a few crappy looking late garage sales. For those who are not familiar with this part of Southwest Florida (I'm assuming you don't live here) Thomas Edison and Henry Ford lived on this street, which means rich people feel they also need to live here as well for at least six months out of the year.

     I walked right in to this persons side storage of their house, and saw tons of ancient romance books. 40's,50's and 60's. I did some quick eBay searching as i walked around and really saw no value unless i could buy them all and sell them as a huge lot. Being a lazy bastard, I cherry picked the bags and boxes and picked out a few that I was willing to spend at least fifty cents on.

     I picked up a few more books but had already given them away to someone who wanted them more than me. You can see what I got here.. no fantasy or sci-fi really. I just felt compelled to grab something to make it worth my time. An early Alice in Wonderland caught my eye, so had to toss that in. Ebay sellers are getting around $15 for similar copy. The other books I can get around $5 a piece for. Not bad on my $2.00 investment! I don't think I'll sell them just yet, but i like to put a value on things.

     This one stood out for me. What the hell is it? I guide to not having sex? Could of used something like this in high school. Let's check it out real quick.

     It's exactly as I said. Some bunch of Catholics in the 40's came up with this to keep young men and women on the right side of god concerning sexual desires. Ironic that I found this book wedged in between some really old nasty smut books. Barbara likes it roughly in the barn, but she conducts herself in a way that agrees with. Right. Obviously the creators of this book never thought i would be making fun of their passages in a public forum. I wonder if in 1940 the word "Boner" was used to describe erections yet? I'll ask my dad.

     In closing, I did pretty good and hit around ten yard sales finding nothing. God's no-sex manual was the biggest score of the day, netting me around $20.00 on eBay. Who would buy it? It doesn't even have pictures.

Incoming Rare Shit! (1960's IF)

     The last picture on the bottom right looks like a gold 'Future Penis". I wish to be known as the only person with a blog to use the phrase "Future Penis" to describe something.

     My mother the author, (Check out her website) happens upon some cool stuff, and sent me these pictures on Facebook, with a short message saying she mailed them out along with some other old books she found I would like.  God love her, and her sense of literature. I'll ad these to my ever growing weird 60's/70's short story magazine collection I have going.
     Side note, I hit up some garage sales last weekend and took some pictures of my finds out in the wild so I'll try and get that stuff tomorrow. I gave away two books already to a friend who also collects: An Alfred Hitchcock serial paperback first edition, and one of those star maps from the 50's. Nothing really of value, but worth mentioning when they are missing from the post.
     Also.. a shout out to Tim Miller for writing in and saying something positive, and for mentioning Sean Connery. The picture below, that can not be described by any means, is for Tim and his twin brother.

What is your favorite book? Mine is..

  
    It's strange to some people, but The Club Dumas is my go-to book. I have read it no more than fifty times, and every time I have found something that I did not fully understand or was important to later events. It's not valuable, or rare, but just one of the best books I have ever read.

     I'll give you a quick time line; Before the movie The 9th Gate came, I saw the preview and loved what I saw. At the end of the trailer there was a blurb about it being based on the book. So, I went and got the book, read it, and read it again. I watched the movie five or six times. Since that fabled moment I have owned five copies of the book and given them all away only to buy another one a week later. I vowed if anyone asked about the book I would give it to them just so everyone could read it and hopefully like it as much as I did.

     As for the movie, I did like the movie very much, but not enough to watch it fifty times.

Post Disney Book Hunt.. With added bonus!

 

     So I took my family to Disney World for the weekend, and stayed in one of the nice hotels in the park. My son, being a huge Disney fan and also being of that age where he can enjoy it, had a great time. My wife discovered Pin Trading, which is described here.

 



     I took this picture after I bought her some of the first pins, and later surprised her with more. My current hobby costs me about $10 a week, one day of Pin Trading cost me almost $70.

    So one of my favorite book hang outs of yore is closing it's doors for good. One for the Books of Cape Coral, which across the bridge from me has an aggressive rare and unique book collection spanning several centuries. As you all know, I look almost exclusively for Fantasy and Sci-Fi, and they also have a large selection of rare and out of prints to choose from. As they are closing, everything until the end of the week is 50% off. I took the opportunity to grab some things i normally would not buy. I'll also mention that they research almost every title that would be worth money, and already have those books separated from the bunch and individually priced. In short, they know what they have.

     This is their Fantasy/Sci-Fi Isle. The top shelves have the rare stuff, and some oddities. Each end cap has a good selection of golden age science fiction in plastic bags so you don't damage them. I personally don't keep my books in bags. Not sure why.

      An example of what i consider "top shelf" stuff. Early 70's Asimov magazines, and Galaxy mags. They were priced at $10.00 each, which is pretty high. At half off that's still $5.00 a piece. Out of my price range today. Having dropped close to a grand at Disney, I'm not eager to splurge any time soon.

     Sorry the picture is dark, the Florida sunshine was coming in through the window. Normally covered, they were taking things off the windows and walls. Old Starlog mags, comic book oddities and graphic novels. Nothing really special, but cool if you are a fan of a specific thing. There was also a small section of used Dungeon & Dragon's books.

    
     Right under the magazine shelf is all the Hard Covers. Great selection, but nothing I was too interested in. I have way too many Hard Covers to be buying more at this point unless it's pretty rare. Once upon a time i found some gems in this same spot.. maybe eight years ago. If there was anything valuable in here, it had been picked over because of the clearance.

     One of the aforementioned end caps with rare bagged books. I shopped from these racks for at least 15 minutes.. until the wife yelled at me that my time was up. I took my small stack of books up to the register, thanked the owner for years of cool selections and good finds and made my way out. He mentioned at the register the business was for sale for $25,000. If only I had the money to do such a thing..

Anyways. Here is what I took home with me:

 

     I'm not going to list the authors and titles like I normally do, you can see what they are. Click to enlarge if you have a problem seeing any details. I take all my pictures with my stupid camera on my iPhone as opposed to bringing a digital camera with me. In my previous adventures, people don't like it when you start snapping photos in their store. A few things stand out with the books here, one of which is ZARDOZ. Fucking Zardoz. I saw this in the bagged books for some reason. I asked the owner why it was mixed in with those, and he remarked that it was rare. Rare! He had $5.00 on it, which in my opinion is $5.00 too much.

     Yeah I bought it. How could I not? A quick Internet search proved it was slightly rare and only had two printings. Why did they ever decide to have a second printing? Who decided to include pictures of Sean Connery's chest hair in the movie tie-in? I do not know what I'm going to do with this book. I think it must be destroyed. My brother ate his words not too many posts ago..

     But not to ignore the cool Galaxy Mags, which they had many of scattered around. I grabbed the two that would be the most significant in terms of its contents. Love Asimov, so got that one out of habit. So... all in all I had a pretty good day. Spent a little more than I wanted to, but found some really cool golden age books. Maybe doubled the money I spend. Ironically, I think made out on Zardoz.

Thanks Sean Connery.