TCG YouTube Season 2 episode 2 - The Lord of the Rings Ace Paperbacks

There's some information about Jack Gaughan and the Ace covers here

https://efanzines.com/SoWS/SoWS-06.pdf

which might be of interest.

Great video as always gentlemen. With the exception of LF I believe I own more ACEs than anyone else here (I'm not prepared to die on that hill, it's not a contest I'm just counting volumes). There are two points I would like to make concerning this book regarding two different although related issues that produce the final result that answers the question as to why ACEs carry the price tags they do.

First the number of books printed. 150,000 was the number printed. That isn't a small number but neither is 60 years either. There was a study done years ago to see how many Parliament Introducing the Beatles were left in absolute Mint condition or better. 0.02% of the total surviving media population, out of millions produced. I would venture a guess that books and especially paperback books AND especially ESPECIALLY these cheaply produced dime store trade rack books attrition rate is similar. LotR has gone on to sell tens or hundreds of million copies now and the global audience dwarfs this books remaining population. In doing an ebay search for Tolkien ACE right now it yields 33 total results. That would be sets and singles. If I search Tolkien Ballantine there are 1300+ results. So yeah, by any comparison they are rarer. Everything supports this. The initial comparatively low run to the Ballantine series, collectible prices going back as far as I can remember and i remember buying my first set for $22.50 from Hyde Brothers @7.50ea in the early 2000s. I could get Ballantines off their shelf for .50ea at the time. As soon as I held them I said to myself "How do I get as many of these damn things as I can?". There's also the issue that these books will NEVER see a reprint (and I am happy it was mentioned that this is the only 1e text paperback that exists). It's not Folio which kicks out some new covers every 5-10 years. The ACEs that exist are all the ACEs that will EVER exist. The supply is finite and hated by the OG publisher and author. There was an actual attempt made to discredit and discourage their ownership. What a voodoo formula! That has every inch of a great story iin itself and people like stories. People really like stories they can own. This leads me to my second point about the ACE series which again supports the levels they've reached and why they will ALWAYS climb higher.


The "Taboo" factor. Say what you will but people like having something they shouldn't have. Or owning something of questionable legality. It's the primary reason these are advertised as "illegal", "pirated", "black market". It's the allure of the forbidden. A certain percentage of people are naturally attracted to this, in any and all ways, walks and fashions. Books aren't different. The Anarchist Cookbook sold more copies based on the fact that it was a banned taboo book than because it has a crappy pipebomb diagram. This is a real phenomena among people so please factor this into your final thoughts about the books.

If Tolkien paperbacks smoked cigarettes, wore shades and had a prison tattoo it would be these ACEs.


1) These ARE the first and rarest mass market paperback LotR that exist.
2) Their dubious history adds another layer of collectibility.


I collect Lion Hobbits for the same reasons I collect these. Everytime I tell people this I get shouted down because XYZ but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and as all of you have pointed out or mentioned sets sell for hundreds of dollars now and nice sets are tough to get. I know, I have everything from torn and ripped library readers to NM+ uncracked gems.

Again love the video, keep them coming.

So I agree I have a buying problem which has equated to owning a lot of Ace sets. But in my defense, I bought my first in 1976 and after continued buying for 47 years the number of sets have added up! ?

And I buy for several reasons…I like the art…nostalgia (they remind me of my initial Tolkien buying thrills as a teenager)…the ongoing hope of finding near fine sets…and I continue looking for variants (almost thought I had one, but not yet!)

Anyway, I got my first set for a song back in ‘76 (I recall about $2). And lately, I have spent significantly way way more than that for exceptional condition sets. But interestingly, I challenged myself to piece together a set for under $25 and over the course of a year searching eBay and AbeBooks, I was able to pull together one for $22.

So, I would agree the demand is steady for Ace sets, and they do seem to be going up in asking price, but there are ways to find copies that don’t call for a high price. And collectible markets can go thru up and down pricing swings due to strong/weak demand, no matter the rarity…hopefully Tolkien collecting will remain strong, but you never know.

(Edit: I want to also add that one has to be careful with how some buying/selling can influence the market in the near term. We’ve seen that, for example, with overzealous buyers (me included) who want to win an auction at any cost and cause a rise in future asking prices. And maybe even me alone, by dumping all my Ace sets over the course of a couple years on eBay, could severely suppress the market. Hypothetically of course!)

I agree Lance. If you search enough you can dig up gems. I have also assembled a set within the last year for 60 dollars, which I still think is fantastic.

I have often considered what would happen if a large volume collection would come onto the market. The answer is that this already happens everywhere, everyday with everything and it doesn't unhinge those markets. It's barely a blip on the overall medias timeline. Unless your stake represents enough copies that you personally have cornered a market this large you really don't matter. Not in the grand scheme of things.

Let's say you did offer all your copies for sale. How many sets will you sell to anyone person? How many can I buy? Will you sell me 25 G+/G sets for X? I don't need any clamshells, just the books.

I can and will buy that much and I'm just one person who's personally not even wealthy. See how fast it could all disappear?

So as large as anyone's collection ever is the market will always tear it to pieces. As one of my favorite teachers would say "All of us are bigger than all of you.".



Edit - Lance, I haven't found any print variants yet but I have 1 RotK where the blue color is strikingly darker and richer than any of my other copies. Uniformly across the entire book. It's apart of my ride or die set even though it's not my best overall condition.

Do you have any of these darker colored versions?

BillThePony wrote:

Do you have any of these darker colored versions?

I do! I have found several sets (and individual books) over the years that are very rich in color. And some where the paper has not yellowed as much as is typically found.

BillThePony wrote:

I have often considered what would happen if a large volume collection would come onto the market. The answer is that this already happens everywhere, everyday with everything and it doesn't unhinge those markets. It's barely a blip on the overall medias timeline. Unless your stake represents enough copies that you personally have cornered a market this large you really don't matter…

Perhaps. What if I just wanted to get rid of them at some ridiculously low price per set ($25?) slowly over a year or two…there might be some impact…

But why in the world would I do that? ?

Anyway, in the end markets can be very odd and not always logical. Case in point when an Ace set sells for as much as a Methuen Silmarillion (and there were a lot less of those printed)…

I thought I would return to the Ace books themselves and put up some images of a few interesting items.

Firstly, a few years ago, I happened across a partial set of Ace that had been rebound in hardcover…for a library or school I suppose. There are no internal markings to help identify the purpose or the date. But they did preserve the covers and spine. (After collecting all this time, these are the only Ace books I personally have seen rebound).

Secondly, it seems someone decided to make custom slipcases for the Ace sets and a few were put up on eBay. They were interesting enough that I went ahead a grabbed a couple.

Finally, I thought I would put up a couple images of one of my better Ace Fellowship books. Of note is that the inside text block is exceptionally clean and the pages have much less yellowing than is typical for these books.

I love those bespoke slipcases! What a nice idea with each of the covers around the sides. Makes me wonder what other cover art might benefit from that treatment... ?

LanceFormation wrote:

I happened across a partial set of Ace that had been rebound in hardcover…for a library or school I suppose. There are no internal markings to help identify the purpose or the date. But they did preserve the covers and spine. (After collecting all this time, these are the only Ace books I personally have seen rebound).

Secondly, it seems someone decided to make custom slipcases for the Ace sets and a few were put up on eBay. They were interesting enough that I went ahead a grabbed a couple.

Finally, I thought I would put up a couple images of one of my better Ace Fellowship books. Of note is that the inside text block is exceptionally clean and the pages have much less yellowing than is typical for these books.

I was wondering when I would run into a permabound set. I have considered rebinding all of my poor copies in those Permabound covers. I have a friend at a book restoration company who already has perfect scans of all the covers. Although I'm typically against restoration efforts on most things I can't see the downside to doing this. The spines are bleached and the pages are loose. What can it possibly hurt? I told myself if I ever built up a nice round number... say 20-50 sets in P/P- I would rebind the entire lot.

Those slipcases are dope. I wish I had one now lol.

Of all my ACEs none have paper as nice as that. Some are close and only have really minor yellowing but nothing quite that clean.