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Re: Unfinished Tales Hardcover from 2000

Subject: Re: Unfinished Tales Hardcover from 2000
by Stu on 2012/1/10 16:16:32

Khamul wrote:
Nerdy car indeed. Very nice it is Stu. On to more pressing matters...

The only historical eBay prices that I've noted are:-

Sept 2009 - £8 (~VG)
Aug 2009 - £32 (~VG)
Feb 2009 - £129 (~VG)
May 2008 - £41 (Stu's copy)

Don't see any earlier, but I probably wasn't too aware of the copy pre-2006.

Why (I'm just curious) do you all assume this is a real rarity, when the only basis for this view is market availablility? Yes, it doesn't seem to turn up that often --but does anyone actually know how many were printed? (Genuinely: does anyone?) If the print run was as for MR, or WotJ, or PoME --then there are many copies out there, and not that many people after them. This is not truly rare, just scarce to market.

Any bets another comes up really soon though; it always happens. (Although, with all this talk, it will probably go for more! )

BH

I would also not have had awareness of this copy prior to 2005/2006 or thereabouts, so wasn't looking prior to this. I'm also not too much of an eBay addict, so I'm certainly not on there all the time (but this is one of the books I do double-check for when I am on).

I'm not aware of any factual information regarding print numbers. I have posed the question before, but noone put their hand up with any information on this. Might be a question for David Brawn at some point.
The other important thing to remember about this book is it shares its ISBN with copies that do not have the same dust jacket, so there may be copies sold with stock photos that are indeed this specific edition, we just don't notice them.

Having said that, generally speaking if a non-consumable item is produced in large volumes it will turn up often on the second hand market, whilst if it is uncommon it will turn up rarely. It seems *unlikely* that this was produced in large numbers based on the evidence of the frequency that books of known print runs turn up. For instance we know the print run of PoME was quite large and it turns up all the time (despite sellers assertions of it being rare). With this one, anecdotally we seem not to have noticed it so often.

Stu