Latest Hoarded Scrolls: 2013 Collectors Editions

Another great video! Its a shame the new ones are paper bindings, but if they do come out with a boxed set, I'm sure they'll look great and I'll be one of the first to pre-order :)

Great video. Informative and concise. Enjoyed this and looking forward to seeing the new Silmarillion. Echo Halbarad's thought that it's a shame we won't be getting cloth bindings of these going forward.

Not to duplicate posts or comments, but in the dedicated Silmarillion thread for this format, Trotter and I were saying/agreed that the newer versions of these are kind of seen or approached as a 'mid-range' product: a bit nicer than a paperback (due to BEING a hardcover) but not as well-made as a typical hardcover would be.

They're great for getting someone into Tolkien, and are good for gifting: reason for both of these is that they are attractive, but won't cost as much as a standard Tolkien hardcover typically would. Luckily, they're priced accordingly (roughly $5 - $10 CDN less than a standard Tolkien hardcover, with dustjacket, etc)

To make my comment worth-while, here are some (possibly all) of the differences between the 2013 versions to the 2022 ones:


- the original editions were the same height as 'typical' Tolkien hardbacks. These reissues are a bit shorter.

- the reissues use the same text as the 2020 paperbacks (with the landscape-style covers) Boxed set ISBN is 9780008387754 for reference.

- the original editions were clothbound, the reissues are not.

- the reissues are cheaper than a standard Tolkien hardback (by approx $5 - $10)

- For The Lord of the Rings titles, the maps of Middle-earth appeared at the front endpapers, and Rohan/Gondor/Mordor appeared at the rear endpaper for all three. For the reissues, Middle-earth is front and back for The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, whereas The Return of the King features Middle-earth at the front, and Rohan/Gondor/Mordor at the rear.

- The Hobbit no longer includes Chapter 1 of The Lord of the Rings at the back, making the book a bit slimmer.

- The Hobbit finally features the 'all new reproductions of Tolkien's art' as initially described. What that means, is that all the artwork is in black and white - including the artwork that is typically seen in colour (such as 'Conversation With Smaug.'). The list of illustrations features the black and white versions of colour artwork with a star reading 'Black and White reproduction of J.R.R. Tolkien's colour plate by Nicollette Cavern (copyright logo) The Tolkien Estate Limited 2020.' This would be for "Rivendell", "Bilbo woke early with the sun in his eyes", "Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves", and "Conversation with Smaug."

- the appearance for all 4 in this style has been updated slightly. They all have foiling on them: gold for The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, copper for The Two Towers and silver for The Return of the King.

We'll see what The Silmarillion is like! There's no 2013 counterpart to compare, so it'll be neat to see how certain aspects of it end up appearing.

Scarlet_Sorcerer wrote:

Not to duplicate posts or comments, but in the dedicated Silmarillion thread for this format, Trotter and I were saying/agreed that the newer versions of these are kind of seen or approached as a 'mid-range' product: a bit nicer than a paperback (due to BEING a hardcover) but not as well-made as a typical hardcover would be.

They're great for getting someone into Tolkien, and are good for gifting: reason for both of these is that they are attractive, but won't cost as much as a standard Tolkien hardcover typically would. Luckily, they're priced accordingly (roughly $5 - $10 CDN less than a standard Tolkien hardcover, with dustjacket, etc)

The selling point for these books is the bindings, and for the earlier edition the boxset. I like the covers, as they are different from the standard UK covers, and IMHO are more like some of the non-English covers, I like the variety and so far they have done a great job with picking excellent binding designs.

I agree (I edited my comment to list some of the changes). They also have a simplistic - but not boring or ugly - design. They don't resemble Tolkien's art with the images themselves, though I find the design and style of the covers is definitely influenced by how he approached certain images and ideas for cover art. The Return of the King one especially feels very 'Tolkien' to me.

Thank you for another excellent video and congratulations on passing the 1k subscribers mark on the YouTube channel!

ToTheBottleIGo wrote:

Thank you for another excellent video and congratulations on passing the 1k subscribers mark on the YouTube channel!

Thank you very much! And thank you to Trotter for making this video himself this time, we are experimenting with new video editing tools and spreading the workload. 😁

Great video!

Thank you all, hope to do more of these videos from articles on the site, of which we have a huge number, I also have a new toy, a book scanner with a top-down camera, that I am hoping to use in videos as well.

I expect to be using this during the Letters livestream, and I think it will be a good addition to these videos. I am working on a post about these scanners.