Not having a PT signature myself to compare against, what do people think of this auction?

Priscilla Tolkien signed book on eBay

Seems strange to be signed twice to different people, plus the Rosemary signature page has more handwriting on the backside that you can kind of see through the paper. Almost looks like a letter or something (one of the Father Christmas letters?)

I'm not affiliated with the auction at all, just happened to run across it. A bit out of my price range. But it has some really nice large scans of the letter and envelope, for those of you who are assembling handwriting samples to become my resident expert.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270092361229

Thanks Deagol!

Every little bit helps. I'll put some time in tonight getting pages up for everything you listed. Is that info coming from your collection? Just curious.

I saw the same sellout then reappearance, I think that is why I just assumed it was a second (revised) printing. It seems odd that they would have unbound sheets of the one volume edition laying around, but certainly possible.

Has anyone bought the deluxe UK edition from a new retailer (Daeron's, Amazon, but not Rown's, all my copies are from the first wave) in the last seven months (and opened it) that can confirm if the copyright page says anything different?

It seems odd that a public company like HarperCollins (subsidiary of News Corp.) would hold on to books or sheets in some warehouse at some considerable cost for marketing purposes. Hard to justify to stockholders. If they weren't selling well, perhaps they stopped distributing for a while to build up demand again?

It was indeed strange... it sold out rather quickly on amazon and then showed up for sale again about 7 months ago... i thought it was rather strange indeed. Either they just printed so many that they did not sell all of them and now with the Children of Hurin want to get rid of them. Or they did something else...
They were looking for something they can call 'deluxe' but want to sell it as a mass product. To make a true deluxe edition, would have been too expensive I think. But how they managed to get more 'deluxe' lotr's and hobbits out there I don't know. Maybe just perfect marketing? Did they know they would sell Children of Hurin in this edition back then? And so kept some copies to sell right now?