Today started out with a bunch of promise and I was really hoping to be able to post pics of one of a new acquisition for my RPG collection: a 1st Printing of Deities & Demigods. Someone in my gaming group gave me a head's up that there was a decent copy in Denton, TX and although I had to wait a painful week before I'd be driving by Denton, today was the day.
The good news is that they had three copies of the Deities & Demigods book, but they were from the 2nd/3rd printing. Now I am not 100% sure if this checks out (I'm sure someone here will set me straight if I'm wrong), but it has been explained to me that the 1st printing had the Cthulhu mythos in it, with no "Thanks Chaosium" statement in it. The 2nd printing did have a thanks statement and the 3rd just removed the Cthulhu mythos altogether.
I think that's well documented enough, but what I heard, and could be 110% bullshit, is that the 2nd and 3rd printings are really the same print run. Somewhere along the line of the second printing they basically stopped the presses and inserted (however that happens) the new whatever-it-was-they used (plates?) and started the presses up again. It was all one print run, just broken up what was actually printed and shipped.
Anyway, this store had two of the 2nd edition(?) and one 3rd. One looked pretty good, but they actually penciled in the price on the front leaf page. WTF, who does that? I get it in some rinky-dink mom & pop booth at an antique mall, but a bookstore with a no-shit "rare book" section that's not only locked but you need a fricken escort? The other one had a huge ugly ownership label badly glued to the inside cover. The real problem was that they wanted $170 each for what was at best a Very Fine (and I doubt they'd actually make that grade) copy.
That was way overpriced for what they had, enough that I wasn't even willing to bother to see if they'd come down. IIRC that value was more than a Near Mint copy.
I did end up finding a Endless Quest D&D book I didn't have and a couple Blu-Ray/4K movies, but the hunt for a 1st printing Deities & Demigods continues on for another day.....
"One looked pretty good, but they actually penciled in the price on the front leaf page. WTF, who does that?"
ReplyDeleteI used to work for a used book/game store that did that with everything. The idiot running the place lost so many sales because she was charging premium prices for even the most common mass-market trash while simultaneously ruing everything of any value, and I could not get her to stop. A terminally stupid person, and thankfully out of business.
The current FLGS has taken to sticking adhesive anti-theft tags inside many of their books, and it's impossible to remove them without damage. Sometimes it's not even on the end pages, I've seen them applied to interior pages covering artwork. It's cost them at least a thousand dollars worth of my business in the couple of years they've been doing it, and I've made good and damn sure to explain why. And still they do it, and the owner even had the balls to ask why I was spending so much less in store a few months back.
I see this at places like HPB all the time. I have no insight into their company policies, but I swear they apply the latest Near Mint price to gaming books regardless of their condition. I frequently see damaged books that should be rated as Fair going for prices I'd expect to pay for mint copies. That wasn't always the case, I'd say it started maybe ten years ago? But somewhere along the lines their pricing on gaming materials just went out of whack.
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