What book/set in your collection was the hardest to obtain?

For me, its probablly the Ballantine Paperback Reprint Edition from 1986 and 1987




While I have much rarer books in my collection they were easy to get. It was strangly hard for me to find a collectable copy of this set with a good box and no cracked spines.

How about you? What was a challange for you to find?

Chatty group!

Now, now Qweniden --don't be too impatient; we're just not the fastest moving forum out there...

I don't know the answer (personally) to your question. Most of the books/items I do have were, in reality, fairly easy to get hold off --I've still to get all the hard stuff. I think the reality is, unless you take into account other factors (as you state) like condition, most Tolkien is fairly common; real rarities are quite uncommon I would suggest. But, like you, a few items haven't really come up in the condition I'd like; or at least not for the price I'd like to match!

BH

While my feelings are much as Khamul's (the hardest finds are the ones I haven't found yet at right price and condition), my hardest that I have found was the large print 1975 edition of Farmer Giles of Ham.

I have a special (inexplicable) liking for large print editions and this is one of the prettiest (shown here next to a "normal" edition) with all the Pauline Baynes illustrations (just bigger).

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An easy question for me... After finding decent individual copies of the Reader's Union edition of The Two Towers and The Return of the King, it then took me another five years before I could find a suitable copy of Fellowship.

Finally I got one through a seller on Abe Books and another set was completed.

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