Garage Sales, Yard Sales & Flea Markets.. Oh My.

     As a family we hit quite a few yard sales and garage sales on Saturday morning. We had a lot planned for the afternoon, so we tried to be quick at the sales we stopped at. As a whole everything was looking good. Jen had found some books she wanted, software for my son, and some key finder thing from Sharper Image. My boy found some toys that he could not live without, so we got those too. Nothing for me until the last yard sale.. pictured above.

 Analogs! Fantasy & Science Fiction! (Something else under it, that I will save for a rainy update.)

 

 On the left, an early Future Makers and a Daw sci-fi original. Honorable mention, a text book from 1873.

Later that night, we went bowling and had sushi with some friends and had a blast. I woke up this morning with a total headache, but I knew I better get out there or someone else will. (I keep telling myself that, even though I seem to be the only one out here buying this stuff)

 

     The flea market was a ghost town. We stopped and got something to eat before meeting up with my buddy the book seller who said they had something nice for me. We split a Cuban and some of the deep fried ghetto chips. The boy had pizza that looked good enough for any cafeteria on the east coast. Belly's full, time to see what's doing.

 

 Yes, they sell used cars inside, as well as a shelf of Dreamcast and PS1 games.

 Shitty 90's comics!

 Star Log mags (that I have already) and New Kids stuff in the same stall.

 Star Trek books anyone? Star Blazers.. what anime is this? Serious I don't know.



    
   Again I came back around to the book seller's row, where it's almost all books, VHS, DVD, and really just media in all shapes and types.

     Chris saw me right away and told me not to go anywhere, he had a box of books that he forgot he had pulled out for me a long time ago.. like more than a year ago. I checked things out in the meantime and found a couple things that I wanted.

     By the time he got back and dumped a whole box of vintage books on me, I had picked out another dozen or so hard cover books that escaped me before, being the wrong spot under a table. We negotiated, I paid. What treasures did I pick up? Behold!

 The huge box on the table, mysteries unknown.  Good mix of Sci-Fi, and fantasy.

 It just keeps on giving! Daw classics, and early first editions.

 A few Forgotten Realms books I did not have, some I did, Spelljammer (meh.) and a rouge Piers Anthony. The hard backs just kicked me in the nuts when I saw them, and I know what that feels like. All first edition hard covers from the 60's and 70's in great shape. All valued in the $20 range, and some at more than that.

     Found a few other hard backs around the corner from my buddy's stall for pennies, along with a few Executioner books for my brother who collects them. More on that later!

 

 

     All in all, a pretty good day. I spend $23.00 in total the whole weekend on books. My ten dollar budget was whacked by three bucks, but I blame my brother for that. Damn Executioner books... Cool covers though. I found some other things over the weekend, and took some pictures of some interesting shit I'll share with you guys in the middle of the week as time permits.

This Weekend's Updates, May Posts, Q&A

     It's no secret I have not been going book hunting lately. I have read your emails and comments on facebook. I have every intention of going out hunting this weekend and getting some really great shit.

Saturday: Garage Sales if it does not rain. If it does, Ill hit some book stores in the area.
Sunday: It's always Flea Market on Sunday. I'll see if I cant get a good post together with some great finds.

     I have got a few cool things on Amazon, like the Dune first edition paperback for $4.00 and a Neuromancer first edition for the same price. Two great finds, but shipping sucks and takes forever to get to your house. I'll try to brush up more on those things later.

     As far as updates for May, I'm going to try and stick to this mobil app on the surface tablet and do more updates from the phone and tablet on the road. I think it will keep me interested and have more to write about. I can only take so many pictures of books laying around my house and write intesting articles about them. I do have some more "in house" articles lined up for the weekdays, but you know I just want to get out there and hunt down some great first editions.

     I like to try and answer everyone's comments and emails as quickly as I can, and I hope I'm doing a good job. Ill answer a few quick common questions I get in these emails below.

How many books do you own?
Thousands. I don't have a real count, but from the ones in my catalog its over 2700.

What camera do you use?
An iPhone, and sometimes a Kodak easy share camera that is pretty old.

Can I buy things from you I see in your posts?
No, unless I post them on ebay with the link to the auction.

What do you do for a living?
I design beer placements and sets for a national beer distributor.

Are you rich or something?
I don't know why, But I have heard this a few times. No, not by a long shot, but I do alright. My job pays me good, has great benefits, and allows me freedom and travel expenses to have that freedom.

Best beer ever?
Hopslam by Bells. Hands down, no one has made a better beer.

Wayland Drew & Dragonslayer, now with more Vasectomy

     I'm forced to do another small update from my Microsoft Surface tablet downstairs, as my wife is playing Guildwars 2 upstairs on my computer. It has the better video card.. and well everything better so I don't really blame her. I have been banished to the coffee table in the living room until further notice. If you had not seen the title of the post already, you could assume by the picture that I really enjoy the movie Dragonslayer.

     I kind of picked what I wanted to take pictures of at random last night sitting at the dinner table with Kyle (of $200 beer coaster fame). The movie was on TV, AMC I believe, and got the gears turning. Once upon a time I made a website and custom D&D rules based on this book and movie, and really had a small online following going on. As with most of what I do, I never looked at the website after I made it in the 90's, so it got stuck in some kind of fan-page limbo.

  The first picture at the top of the page is the first edition paperbacks, first and second printings. The picture directly above is the hard cover first edition which is not all that bigger than the paperbacks. The value on any of the books hovers right around $10.00. Not really easy to find, but not really sought after in any way. these books are stuck in rarity hell. Written by Wayland Drew, who has since deceased, who also wrote Corvette Summer, Willow, and some other movie adaptations that did pretty well for him. Of course in the paperback there are some color pictures...

     The book added a lot to the movie, based on the script and not actually the movie itself. Comic books of the time added to the mythos, which I have ordered on eBay right now for the super high value cost of $1.49. Side Note: Get use to seeing my thumb, I'm not going to start using the scanner again anytime soon. People don't take enough of their own pictures anymore, and by leaving imperfections in the ones I take, the less likely people will rip them from Google images. Willow anyone?

     Big fan of the movie as a youngster, and yes, this is my book from around middle school. It's missing pages and I wrote in it on occasion. I had a thing for Sorcia (spelling?) before she was married to Val Kilmer, the best swordsman who ever lived. This book was reprinted a ton of times, and eventually, sequels were made. Written by George Lucas and some no name writer that escapes me, and yes I own them, but I'm too lazy and sore to get off the couch and look. I thought they were okay, and they followed Allora Dannon around, her mis-adventures and so on. Not to change the subject so dramatically, but I have to share something with you guys because it's nagging at me in a bad way, much like a bad dinner from P.F. Changs.

     I had a vasectomy on Monday night, because, well, I don't want to have any more kids and I'm at that age where recovery will still be quick. A vasectomy is where you get your balls split open and they burn the tubes in there that make the sperm. Then you sit around the house with black and blue nuts for a week wishing you never did it to begin with. As I write this, I have a bag of frozen corn between my legs. I would not recommend it for anyone unless you just can't afford condoms and your insurance will pick up the cost. What does this little rant have to do with Wayland Drew? Nothing, but it's my blog, and my testicles are sore, so there.

R.I.P. Wayland Drew (and my manhood)

Forgotten Realms: The Harpers

     The Harpers was one of my favorite book series of all time. Its no secret: Im a AD&D junkie from way back. An ultra nerd if you will. I played every campagin you can think of, and no setting was off limits. The Forgotten Realms paved the way for my imagination and addiction to High Fantasy. It was not until just this year I got all 16 of The Harpers in one place, including the very well known Finders Trilogy. (or Finders Quartet!)
    

 

    So basically every well known Forgotten Realms author got a crack at writing a Harpers novel, the opoular ones were reprinted, and the later ones were reprinted as stand alone novels. (12-16) The copies I have from 12-16 are the reprinted ones. The list of the books are located here. Hard to find all these books in one place, for sale or otherwise. Now to the good bits.

 

    

     Some of the better books in the Forgotten Realms universe are some of the firsts. The Azure Bonds trilogy written by Kate Novak and Jeff Grub, employees of TSR and co-creators of the universe itself, was arguably the better of most fantasy books written at the time. Several popular video games were made about this series in the 80's and early 90's. The fourth book in the series, The Masquerades was written many years later when the original authors had 'a crack' at writing a Harpers novel. It's what the fans wanted, and was the perfect ending to a perfect series within-a-series.

Screen shot of the computer game, with Alias' tattoo. I did not take this picture obviously.

 

The Tattoo as depicted in the book. 

 

 I love maps, so took a few pictures of the maps on the first page.

 

 



Xanth Oddities, Part 1 of.. a lot.

     There are enough Xanth oddities to do several parts, so if there are some fans out there I'll do another one down the line. What you see above is Jody Lynn Nye's choose your own adventure-like books about Xanth. Yes, they are licensed and considered cannon in the series. I'll take this time to apologize for the "warm" look to the pictures, I installed new lighting in the house and it takes a while to get real bright.
   

     So you play these books a bit different than a normal book of it's type. In this case, you basically get a pre-filled out character sheet that you can change some of the stats, and those are explained in the first few pages. There are places where you can write and so on to keep track of your hit points. I tried to read one of these as research for this little article, but kept hitting the Kill Pages...

 Harpy Tits! and the Question Hand?

 Happy Stump and the first edition of the Xanth Map.

    
     Like I was saying, when you hit a kill page, typically they had some photo copied looking art, ironically by the same person who illustrated the Visual Guide... and written by the same lady as well. Surprise!

    
     This is my second copy I actually ordered from 1-800-hipiers, the phone number listed in all the early authors notes. Piers' author's notes tend to be almost a chapter long by themselves.

    
     A little bonus; I was taking pictures for this post and realized that the two Crossroads books were signed by Jody Lynn Nye. Pretty neat! My mom bought these off eBay for me years ago, so I'll take the time right now to thank her for these yet again. Thanks mom.

Favorite Asimov Cover Art, and Update

   These are scans from my Collectorz.com image database. I may have scanned them in five years ago, and they still hold up pretty well. That aside, these printings of the foundation trilogy are some of my favorite covers ever. The geometric shapes, the symbolism, it's amazing.

     Quickly, I'll be updating with a new book case collection overview/retrospective in the morning. It's just too late to think straight, and I've had a couple beers which makes increases the difficulty of this post by a factor of.. five.
 Till tomorrow.

I bought a couch... and found some books.

     But first.. I have to run out and buy some furniture. I know, don't tell me, its boring. I have said several times before, I hate buying anything new. By that I mean I dont like to spend money on anything at all. I'm cheap, I save everything, and always try to get the best deal. My cat Artax, named after the horse in Neverending Story, tore up our old couch and the time finally came where I could not listen to the wife complain about it anymore. She deserves a couch after all, and so does this guy:

     He loved it. My son likes a good piece of furniture and pretty much sold it for me. Some haggling and price reductions, toss in the matching chair for a little bit extra and I caved, and my wife signed. Secretly my thoughts drifted to beer and books, two of my favorite things and I hurried home and took some pictures.

 

     The story goes like this: I bought these books at the Flea Market after working overtime on a Saturday merchandising grocery stores on easter weekend. I never took any pictures because I really didnt see anything that was new or stood out. We drank a beer, got some books and tore ass out of there. Upon further inspection I didnt do too bad!

 

 

     The winner of the day was the first edition George R.R. Martin book, A Song for Lya. Games of Thrones being as big as it as, this book goes for about $50 on ebay all day long. Nice score! The rest of the books are nickles and dimes ($5-10) with the Mine to Mind book selling for about $20. I think I bought these at the six-for-five book place, so thats a pretty awesome score for the money spent! I swear I could do this for a living. As with most TV ads, wait, there's more!

 

      Ladyhawke! A great movie with a great retro music score. I have a copy of this book already, but love the movie so much I could not resist. I opened up the book to find a cut out of an 80's TV guide advertisment with TV listings for the Boston/Metro area. Cheesy pictures? Of course. Worth anything? Of course not, but it's priceless to me.

 





Piers Anthony & Xanth Edition Variation

 
     At one time in my life I really enjoyed Xanth books. It was around middle school to early High School when I mostly stopped reading them altogether. The damage was done. The puns and sexual innuendo of the fantasy realm enchanted my young mind. Being that the majority of the Xanth novels started in the 70's and 80's, cover variations were pretty unique, and sometimes not-so. Exhibit A: Ogre, Ogre.

     The color of the books is not a product of fading, it's just what happens between printings. Typically the covers get lighter as the printings run on. Only one of the above is a first edition (I'll let you decide). Typically there will be a blurb of some sort over the cover art saying, "A Xanth Novel", or "A New Xanth Novel!", or the like. I hate the blurb like I hate herpes. It just ruins the great art on some of these older books.

 

     I just realized how boring this post is so i will quickly end it with this: Collecting variations of book printings is nearly impossible and has no real value. What is written inside is still the same, you wont be missing anything, and really its just tough to do. My advice is to just get the first edition if you want it and always keep your favorite books that you read the first time. If you can't find the first edition, use that money to buy beer.. or herpes medication.

Jared's Collection Update

          My brother likes him some Mack Bolan. What a collection! I wonder how many people have half this many. I'll do a google search later and check it out. He then sent me this a few days later on Facebook: