Quick facsimile dustjacket printed out (I knew I created all those facsimiles for a reason!). Will keep me going until/if I ever find a jacketed copy at a price I'm willing to pay!

N.B. If you wondering about the blue, the '51 has a different shade of blue than any of the others, presumably for reasons only known to the printers (or at least some of them are the lighter blue - I actually wonder if two batches of jackets were printed).

Lovely stuff

Stu wrote:

Finally got a 1951. Have all of them from '42 onwards now (and only the '51 doesn't have a jacket). £270 from a dealer, which is probably not a bad deal based on what these seem to go for these days / how scarce they are. Decent nick, no bumped corners, etc, but a bit of foxing to the endpapers.

Congrats to this lucky find Stu - it’s on my wish list as well...

Not extremely rare or valuable, but have been looking for these copies for quite a while. Very excited to finally have these in my hands!

Nabbed a few new releases as Christmas acquisitions:
-Unfinished Tales Illustrated Edition
-2020 LotR/Hobbit Boxed Set (1st printing actually, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't end up with the 2nd printing)
-2021 Tolkien Calendar

Nothing too rare or valuable here of course, but great additions to my (small) collection nonetheless. Did anyone else snag any Christmas loot?

So I ordered The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise from the tolkien.co.uk website sale, and I have a question for anyone who might have ordered a POD copy of this book.

Please see the images where the printing on the front and back of seem really off-centered.

Is this expected and okay?

I have the same and mine is properly aligned. I've had mine for about 5 years.

I seem to recall reading about POD when it was brand new that minor printing imperfections are possible, given the nature of POD itself. Though I for the life of me can't remember where I've read that. An example of this could be the ink for the text in the History of Middle-earth books, as well as any images (manuscript pages, maps, etc.). I'm sure others here can further elaborate on my post.

I've done a side-by-side and the difference in alignment is slightly noticable and incredibly minor. Essentially, it looks as if yours is in the right SPOT, where mine is also, however it looks to be a difference (this is to explain what I mean) of using 'tab' to centre something in Word vs using the 'center alignment'

I’ve ordered the HOME Index recently and there you can see the same effect: the spine printing is well centred but front and rear are a little bit shifted on the outside.

I don't have a POD copy of The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise to compare against, but I do have the POD Index, and mine is quite nicely centered. From these posts it seems as if recent POD dustjackets have a bit of an issue in this regard, might be worth contacting their customer service if you got a recent copy and this is an issue for you.

To further on my comment, I believe that what happens with POD varying quality is that they essentially 'facsimile reproductions' of the original.