Question for Beren -- is this a copy you are looking to acquire for as part of your personal collection or as a book dealer to trade onward?

Trotter I deleted my post and then Stu's correct response to it, which was that it was a later edition

This is a copy i'm looking to acquire for a client. But this time only a true first will do, needs to be unrestored... the best I can find. So far no luck. Hard to find anything at all.

Beren wrote:
This is a copy i'm looking to acquire for a client. But this time only a true first will do, needs to be unrestored... the best I can find. So far no luck. Hard to find anything at all.

Yeah, there seems to be a disturbing trend towards restoration on these. Hides a lot of sins, plus you don't really know what is genuine any more in some cases. I can see why your client wants unrestored.

Dogfark's currently for-sale example of the 1942 copy, where the spine comes from three (or is it four on the last modification?) different books comes to mind....

Correct... so far I have seen all copies currently available. None will do. All have something that is not up to standard. It is very sad actually. Don't like most restorations... some are done very poorly. And I truly don't like tipped in signatures. I don't get it - after several years it will just ruin the book.

Somehow I hope here is a collector who knows a collector (you know what I mean) who knows someone who is willing to sell. As i'm ready to pay good money.

My suggestion would be, to look over auction results for the past few years and see if there is a copy that matches your search. Then contact the auction house and ask them to pass on a note to the buyer of record to contact you, if they are interested.

Beren wrote:
Correct... so far I have seen all copies currently available. None will do. All have something that is not up to standard. It is very sad actually. Don't like most restorations... some are done very poorly. And I truly don't like tipped in signatures. I don't get it - after several years it will just ruin the book.

Somehow I hope here is a collector who knows a collector (you know what I mean) who knows someone who is willing to sell. As i'm ready to pay good money.

Indeed. The tipped-in signature done after the fact (i.e. not a specifically signed bookplate added at the time of purchase or close-to) is just awful. Have seen so many nice books ruined like this. And likely as not, the signature was taken from something that would have some interest in itself, also ruined.

Good luck finding a copy. Hopefully you can find someone before they decide to restore and send it to an auction house. Sadly, the more restored copies are sold, the more people will think they need to restore to make their copies look as artificially clean.