Fellowship: Question #1 - How long have you been a Tolkien collector?

I got my start in the late 1980's after I destroyed my paperback copies (the Michael Herring 50th anniversary US paperbacks) from re-reading. I also had access to my parents' copies of the first US hardcovers in the blue cloth bindings, and I loved discovering the differences between the first and second edition texts. Replacing my personal copies and looking for differences got the ball rolling and I never looked back!

I started collecting Tolkien books 5 years ago so I am rather a new Tolkien collector compared to a lot of you on this forum. However, my father and grandfather were also Tolkien collectors so I inherited a nice collection from them

Although I was reading Tolkien pretty heavily in the 90's (HoME etc) I didn't consider myself as someone collecting Tolkien. The first entry in my "Book List", which I started in order to keep track of all the books I had (particularly H. P. Lovecraft paperbacks), is for March 2001; so I'll say this is when I started really collecting & certainly when I started collecting Tolkien proper.

First entry you ask? Not Tolkien.

SELECTED LETTERS 1934-1937 (AH) [SL vol. V]
H. P. Lovecraft

Date of Purchase: March 2001
Book Price: £13.50 (~$20)
P+P: £4 (~$6)
Bookseller: L. W. Currey

Started collecting Tolkien in 2002 after watching an episode of the "Antiques Roadshow" which featured a first edition hobbit. Had never occured to me to collect Tolkien books until then but some switch flicked on in my brain that day and the collecting disease took hold rapidly accumlating over 500 books in the first year (nearly all cheap low end stuff - did not progress to the more collectible/expensive stuff for a few years until I had the proper knowledge to know what I was buying). Tolkienbooks.net was a great resource (A debt of gratitude to Deagol). Still afflicted with the disease to this day and have had no periods of remission.

Read the hobbit in 1980 at the age of 10 and the Lord of the Rings 4 years later. (took me 3 months - turning the page was not a happy event as I knew I was one page closer to the end of the book) - To this day they were the 2 books (especially the Lord of the Rings) which had the most impact on me (though I have to say - I have very much enjoyed the Game of Thrones saga and am getting fed up of waiting for the final book/books).

I got my first copy of The Hobbit in 1981 and started trying to collect and read all of the Tolkien titles listed opposite the title page in the mid-80s. I crossed the line into "serious" collcting after getting a copy of Wayne Hammond's Descriptive Bibliography in 1998. I got interested in website development in 2002 and TolkienBooks.net was born in 2003.

Having reached a point where I have 99% of what I want to collect Tolkien-wise, I have gone back to revisit the reading habits of my youth and collect various aspects of SF and fantasy and document the collection at SFandFantasy.co.uk.

In 1997 my girlfriend, now my wife, gave me the trilogy of The Lord of Rings and since then I have not stopped to collect everything that relates to the wonderful Middle-earth. In 21 years I have traveled extensively for work and leisure (United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Spain, German, Holland, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Greece, Croatia, Poland, etc.). and in every country I have bought something regarding Tolkien. I have over 800 editions of Tolkien's books published in many languages, and about a two thousand between objects, prints, LP, stamps, action figures etc..In the first years I collected different editions of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" (however I like to buy every single thing related to him and his works), but for several years I have bought only academic or signed books. I have books and letters that belonged and signed by: J.R.R. Tolkien, Edith Bratt, John, Michael H. Priscilla and Christopher, Michael G. Tolkien, J.B. Tolkien (Arthur's father), Arthur Tolkien, Mabel Tolkien (to be verified), Francis Xavier Morgan, C.L. Wrenn, Owen Barfield, Dorothy L. Sayers, George Sayer, Robert Havard, George S. Gordon, Lascelles Abercrombie, Anne Hudson, Vera Chapman, John Leyerle, G.E. Selby, Pauline Baynes, Robert Hardy, Helen T, McM Buckhurst, Naomi Mitchison, Stanley and Rayner Unwin and Adam Fox. These ones I remember. Since 2008 I have created the website http://tolkieniano.blogspot.com and I have also published several books on Tolkien in Italian and English.

Hi Tolkieniano,

did you check my message from 5 months ago by any chance? Would really appreciate your response. Thanks:)

I started collecting casually in the 1990s, appropriating my father’s Tolkien paperbacks first (the 1970s Ballantine editions with the Tolkien artwork) and picking up a new edition whenever possible. I was hooked on Tolkien before I even cracked The Silmarillion, but after that it was game over. Having always been a bit of a starving artist I never thought I would be in a position to collect seriously, but about five years ago I found a cheap first edition set of LotR on eBay and realized that wasn’t necessarily the case, and I’ve been sort of zeroed in on the hobby ever since.

Same as Urulöké, the textual differences between editions (and other bibliographic detail) also piqued my interests; I used to jot down every error/inconsistency I came across (a project I was happy to abandon after finding the Des. Bibliography). Findegil and Deagol’s works were so helpful and inspiring… I had wanted to contain my collecting to the British editions but since those were already so well documented I invested in US editions just to find some uncovered ground!

I started when I was 10 or 11 (circa 1982), with a copy of The Return of The King (ahh, yeah....) that I purchased at the local store. After that I picked up the current-for-the time Allen & Unwin / Unwin Hyman hardbacks and rolled into HB HoME each year as they were released (Christmas/Birthday presents, typically).

In terms of collecting an unnecessary quantity of primarily UK editions (although I do have the US 1st prints of HoME) of exactly the same thing , I didn't start that until the very early 2000s, I believe, and had a few years with a lot of collecting, followed by more years of light collecting. I don't collect a great deal these days (a Hobbit here and there, mostly), and mostly just enjoy seeing what other people uncover.

I like the minutiae of differences in dust jackets, etc. Pointless information that few people care about, and has no consequence for the world, basically.

I don't like anything other than print media, and if it's movie-related, it can die by fire. Also, no interest in paperbacks post-Unwin.