Posts Tagged ‘J. R. R. Tolkien’

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Book Acquisitions: The History of Middle Earth Volumes IV—XII

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

The week before Armadillocon, Half Price Books had their usual coupon sale, which starts out with a coupon for 40% off one item Monday-Tuesday, 30% Wednesday Thursday, etc., ending with a 50% off coupon on Sunday.

While shopping there Tuesday, I noticed that someone had sold them what appeared to be almost all of the Christopher Tolkien-edited The History of Middle Earth volumes. I asked management if they could apply my 40% coupon to all books in the series, and after looking at them they agreed. I ended up taking Volume IV-XII, because the earlier volumes either had some wear or were later printings. In fact, at the register they ended up taking 50% off each volume, each of which were $14.99, so I think I bought all of them at $7.49 each.

The UK editions precede, but the American editions aren’t particularly easy to find either. All of these are either Fine/Fine or Fine/Fine-, with some minor dust jacket wrinkles.

  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume V: The Lost Road and Other Writing. Houghton Mifflin, 1987. First American edition.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume IV: The Shaping of Middle Earth. Houghton Mifflin, 1986. First American edition, Fine/Fine.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume VI: The Return of the Shadow: The History of the Lord of the Rings Part One. Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume VII: The Treason of Isengard: The History of the Lord of the Rings Part Two. Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume VIII: The War of the Ring: The History of the Lord of the Rings Part Three. Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume IX: Sauron Defeated: The History of the Lord of the Rings Part Four. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume X: Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Simarillion Part One. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume XI: The War of the Jewels: The Later Simarillion Part Two. Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
  • Tolkien, J. R. R. (edited by Christopher Tolkien) The History of Middle Earth Volume XII: The Peoples of Middle Earth. Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

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    You Could Own John Wayne’s Copy of The Lord of the Rings

    Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

    Heritage Auction is auctioning off tons of items from the estate of John Wayne. Being the canny man he was, he saved just about everything from his movie career: scripts, outfits, awards, you name it. There’s a treasure-trove of Hollywood memorabilia going under the hammer, including letters from Ronald Reagan, Katherine Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra, and about a hundred other luminaries.

    I did take a look at the books being sold from his library, but all of them have opening bids substantially above market minus the Wayne connection. However, I did want to point out his owning copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Not firsts, of course (Wayne seemed to be an avid reader, but not a book collector), but that beautiful second edition Houghton-Mifflin LOTR set done to bring the books back into copyright after the unauthorized (but borderline legal) Ace books edition. This is the edition my father read to me from as a child, and it’s the edition I own.

    Heritage sends out a Heritage Magazine for the Intelligent Collector as a freebie to people who bid in their auctions, and they had a fascinating interview with his son Ethan Wayne about growing up living with his father, and about how random people would come around. One time John Wayne saw some guys coming up his dock, grabbed a gun and said “Who are and what do you want?” “Golly, Mr. Wayne, we’re Marines. We just heard that you lived here.” “Well then come on up and have a drink.” And they sat around drinking until 1 o’clock in the morning.

    Sounds like he was a swell guy.

    Edited to Add: John Wayne’s Tolkien collection sold for a hefty $2,868.

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    Recent Book Auction Results of Note

    Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

    You may already have noticed that I buy a lot of books. Many I buy direct from the publisher (many of which I also sell copies of through Lame Excuse Books), some I buy from other book dealers, either off the Internet or at cons, some I buy off eBay (although that’s a lot less common since they drove away a goodly portion of the most interesting items by hiking fees into the stratosphere in their effort to turn themselves into an inferior Amazon clone), and a few I buy through auction houses, like PBA Galleries or Heritage Auctions.

    Heritage just completed their 2010 June Signature Rare Books Auction, which, while not focused on science fiction the way the The Ventura Collection auction back in 2007 was, still had a number of notable science fiction and fantasy books up for auction, including a few titles made of Unobtanium. The interesting thing is that the three most notable fantasy titles didn’t sell:

    I thought the price estimate on the Lord of the Rings set was unrealistically aggressive, as decent sets in dust jacket can be had in the $10,000-20,000 range. Nice firsts of The Hobbit in dust jacket are very rare, but I’m seeing a few copies of that available in the $20,000 range as well. (If memory serves, several years ago L. W. Currey had, I think, a signed Fine/Near Fine+ copy in dust jacket listed for $68,000.)

    What does all this mean? Who know? Up at the very highest end of the book market, auction prices can be extremely volatile depending on who’s bidding. Maybe the prices were just too high. Or maybe the big money is sitting out in anticipation of prices dropping due to a double-dip recession.

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