I wasn’t aware that Australia had their own Tolkien books. Wouldn’t they be the UK ones?
(“First Australian Print” was mentioned further above)

Eye_of_the_Black_Tower wrote:

I wasn’t aware that Australia had their own Tolkien books. Wouldn’t they be the UK ones?
(“First Australian Print” was mentioned further above)

They don’t usually, but CoH and S&G were global releases on the same day worldwide. I assume for logistics reasons, AU had their own first prints of these titles. The CoH is better than the LEGO one and the S&G is not quite as good (and has a black binding rather than brown)

Interesting! That does make sense

Image comparison (bottom new one, top first print). Image compression makes it harder to see the differences than in real life. Quite a bit more detail on the original and generally more colour on this specific plate. If you look at the windows on the building at the left foot of the rock arch, it is a good example of detail loss on the new relative to the old.

Arrived today :)

Bummer about the image quality difference (the late Stu). I just received my WM set (ordered yesterday from Amazon US) and don't see any apparent flaws. Somehow my B&L is a 1st impression, but CoH 7th and FoG 5th.

wiseSam wrote:

Bummer about the image quality difference (the late Stu). I just received my WM set (ordered yesterday from Amazon US) and don't see any apparent flaws. Somehow my B&L is a 1st impression, but CoH 7th and FoG 5th.

But the WM one isn't the 2025 edition, it's an older boxset?

The images will look better on the older editions but the box is uglier and the binding is glued.

Since I have History of Middle Earth already, I would only be buying Great Tales (in any version) for the images. The poor quality has put me off a bit despite the edition being overall very good.

Humanracer wrote:

But the WM one isn't the 2025 edition, it's an older boxset?

There is a WM 2025 edition, was just released on Tuesday.

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Great Tales of Middle-earth Box Set: The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, The Fall of Gondolin

Tolkien, J. R. R.
9780063447981
William Morrow (2025-08-19)

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Humanracer wrote:

wiseSam wrote:

Bummer about the image quality difference (the late Stu). I just received my WM set (ordered yesterday from Amazon US) and don't see any apparent flaws. Somehow my B&L is a 1st impression, but CoH 7th and FoG 5th.

But the WM one isn't the 2025 edition, it's an older boxset?

The images will look better on the older editions but the box is uglier and the binding is glued.

Since I have History of Middle Earth already, I would only be buying Great Tales (in any version) for the images. The poor quality has put me off a bit despite the edition being overall very good.

Mine is the new and recently released WM edition mentioned by Mr. Underhill. I was hoping they would all be 1st impressions but I was obviously mistaken!

wiseSam wrote:

Humanracer wrote:

wiseSam wrote:

Bummer about the image quality difference (the late Stu). I just received my WM set (ordered yesterday from Amazon US) and don't see any apparent flaws. Somehow my B&L is a 1st impression, but CoH 7th and FoG 5th.

But the WM one isn't the 2025 edition, it's an older boxset?

The images will look better on the older editions but the box is uglier and the binding is glued.

Since I have History of Middle Earth already, I would only be buying Great Tales (in any version) for the images. The poor quality has put me off a bit despite the edition being overall very good.

Mine is the new and recently released WM edition mentioned by Mr. Underhill. I was hoping they would all be 1st impressions but I was obviously mistaken!

Seems odd for a set only released two days ago. Did they really print that many of them? I can't see the demand being that high. Stupid question maybe but are you sure the other two books are the new editions with the new frontpieces?