For Sale

Thanks HouseOfLostTales, that's quite a collection! There are a few items that interest me (I sent you a note on eBay about one) but I am limited on what I can bring into the house right now. Hopefully you are getting other inquiries as well.

Thank you. This is all that remains of a vastly larger collection. I moved from the EU to ZA and then to the US over the years. I sold / donated / gifted many items over the years. Unfortunately I do not have the time and energy anymore to appreciate the items.

What was your focus HouseOfLostTales? I see a lot of translations of The Silmarillion, for example.

BH

My focus was a core of first editions of LOTR in EU languages: all sold 10 years ago. I then collected foreign Silmarillion editions but also sold / gifted many of those. I also collected fan magazines from the 1950s to 1990s and donated all those. I then spent time in ZA and collected Tolkien related materials from his infancy years in Bloemfontein. I donated all that material as well.

Is it me or does it look like Tolkien collecting is very subdued? Or is there far more supply than demand for books? I guess a lot of inventory flooded the market after the movies hype.

Just look at eBay right now: full of stock clearance sellers (who can't answer questions regarding their own stock); "stock image" auctions (what am I buying?); eBay Mobile posted auctions (with one inarticulate lowercase sentence describing what's on offer); inaccurate Nielsen's publishing information, courtesy of eBay (sellers seem to think this rubbish tells me what book they have); standardised eBay auction titling (everything looks the same); nonsense like the new Global Postage Programme (see forum discussion of this here); the increasing prevalence of actual book dealers who cannot describe condition &/or edition status; etc.

Half of the above can also be applied to various other book sites, including reputable "book" selling sites like Abebooks.

Basically, can't see the wood for the trees, I think. The books (that collectors want) are out there --they're just struggling to compete (& be seen) against an incredible amount of poorly listed (eBay), overpriced (Abebooks) auctions.

BH

Good insights. I guess all the movies junk and related hype volume of books printed does not help either. Tolkien collecting was far more fun before the movies.

We have the same feelings about eBay, though we (actually Christina) daily wade through the great mass of chaff looking for increasingly elusive wheat.

There are some relatively recent books we would go after there, if we could - one of the Cascades Hobbits, the first printing of the new HarperCollins film tie-in paperback Hobbit which we somehow managed to miss when it came out last year, the Book People Hobbit with the dust-jacket - but stock images and generic descriptions do indeed make it impossible to know if the copy offered is the copy wanted, and an uncomfortable number of sellers won't ship to the U.S.A.

We would have bid for three of the Silmarillion translations HouseofLostTales offered on eBay - Greek 1996, Korean 1997, and Romanian 1999 - but didn't want to bid for the larger lot these were in, as we have everything else in it and didn't want to have to try to dispose of so many duplicates.


Wayne & Christina

Update: all books have found a new home. Thank you for your interest and all the best. Namárië!