Hmm, this ad looks like it was written by the same seller who had the COH with the Alan Lee and Ted Nasmith illustrations (all lower-case, "piccadilli," etc). It is very suspicous.

That COH / Hobbit combo certainly does look to be a fake. One thing to keep in mind - I know of zero instances that the bookplates were put into books other than The Children of Hurin.

There are US trade editions with bookplates, and British trade editions and a handful of British Deluxe editions. There were no loose bookplates that I know of.

If you look at that dodgy auction image, even the helm emblem looks like it was scanned in at very low resolution - the lines are very fat and smudged compared with the fine thin lines in the original bookplate:

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Just for comparison, here is a link to an auction that appears to be authentic. Notice the difference in the ink. The real one looks like a standard pen (maybe ball point, roller ball) the other looks like a fine tip sharpie.

http://cgi.ebay.com/CHILDREN-OF-HURIN ... ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This is sad, not only for this auction, but because the ease of forgery with these bookplates certainly reduces the value of the real ones. The only real way to avoid this is special limited editions that only exist in signed form. It is much harder to produce a facsimile of a special binding.

This is truly a shame. Someone has bid on this auction, which seems to me to certainly be a fraud.

http://cgi.ebay.com/children-of-hurin ... ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The signature does not even look like it is in the same ink as the authentic bookplates.

It's June and that means a new Calendar of the Month feature. Hope you like it.

Happy Summer everyone!

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir