There are about five variants of this edition. From memory, without going & getting them all...

Unpriced jacket & "£19.99 then £24.99" priced jacket.
Both have 'J. R. R. Tolkien’ printed with the spine (parallel to spine) in large font size; picture of Maglor perpendicular to spine; and just ‘The Silmarillion’ printed parallel to spine in large font.

£24.99 priced jacket & 2000 incarnation (2nd imp. Pb bound as Hb).
Both have ‘J. R. R. Tolkien’ perpendicular to spine (not parallel) and in smaller font size; picture is ships (not Maglor); under ‘The Silmarillion’ (which is in smaller size) additional ‘Illustrated by Ted Nasmith’ text.

2000 Pb:
Back to original setting: bigger font size; Maglor; no TN mention on spine.

The copies with unpriced jackets, "£19.99 then £24.99" jackets, and "£24.99" --are all 1st imp. copies with full line numbers. Additionally, the US first imp. was probably printed with the first UK edition. If I recall, both were printed in Spain.

BH

Thanks Khamûl. I saw some comments/notes online when looking yesterday that the BCA (book club) put this edition out too - would those be the unpriced jackets perhaps? I know that often BCA would have the same physical book and make changes to the dustjacket only, on occasion. I have no idea if that happened with this edition.

I received a bit of additional information from HarperCollins, and have a few followup questions out for more details. Here is what they told me so far - the "common" dustjacket with multiple prices on it is the first printing of the dustjacket. Later printings of the dustjacket had just the single price on them. The updated spine jacket coincided with the September 2002 illustrated Lord of the Rings release to match the layout there.

Hopefully more to come (like where the 2nd impression of this edition fits into the timeline).

You received an update at 10 p.m. UK time? Interesting...

The explanation makes sense. (They changed the 1997 Hobbit too.) What about the unpriced jackets? Book Club or "export"? And, is there an actually Hb 2nd imp.?

BH

Khamûl - Got lucky today, I guess. I wasn't expecting an answer until tomorrow at the very earliest (a few days would not be uncommon).

Pestering the poor guy in the evening...

BH

He really is nice, and helpful!

Here is more information from our chat:

• 1st impression UK Hardcover: 25,000 copies in June 1998
  

-- These have the dual price dustjacket
-- BCA additional run of 8,500 copies - no price on dustjacket
-- Copies for USA edition, along with Swedish, French, Spanish and Norwegian translations also printed at this time

• 1st impression UK paperback: 6,000 copies, October 2000
  

• 2nd impression UK Hardcover: 5,000 copies in June 2001
  

-- these have the £24.99 dustjacket
-- (my understanding is these are reproduced from the paperback edition - didn't confirm yet).
-- BCA additional run of 3,500 copies - no price on dustjacket

• 3rd impression UK Hardcover: 10,000 copies in March 2002
  

-- these have the new spine to match the 2002 LOTR edition
-- Danish translation printed at this time

He feels that the impressions should be clearly marked on the copyright page, but doesn't have reference copies any more. I personally feel like perhaps that didn't happen fully as intended.

Thanks, Jeremy. Very helpful indeed. Based on your contact's info, it seems there were 42,000 copies printed with the "common" UK dust jacket (including BCA editions) and 10,000 of the updated one that I'm looking for. Evidence would seem to indicate that the copyright pages of of the later impressions did not get updated as you say.

My odds should be about 1 in 5 with this edition. If anyone sees a fine copy with the updated jacket, let me know!

Interesting, Urulöké. Who is the HC source here?

I haven't seen any Hbs with anything other than full number lines, so clearly these "impressions" weren't marked as such. Where does the 2nd imp. Pb bound as a Hb fit in?

BH

I PMed you, Khamûl in regards to the information source. It is reliable.

I do agree that the impressions seem not to have been marked in the books by the printer.

I don't have definitive news on the PB bound as hardcover. Also I don't have one myself to look at in detail. Could someone provide a pic of the copyright page?

Based on what I heard from HC and what has been said here, I would venture a guess that the second impression of the Hb is the rebound PB. Just a guess though.