ANY 1st ed. LotR, ANY intact condition?

When you say dont want to break the bank, i guess the question is how big is the bank?
Prices at the moment are crazy ? , your best bet might be watch ebay closely and pounce on a poor condition set , not that even they come up often but bargains can still be had if quick enough.
I picked up a 1962 set a little while ago for £60 !

I don't think there are huge pagination differences, but the books were re-typeset and/or corrected many times during the first edition print runs. Are you looking for particular printings? US or UK? (The US imported sheets at first so there is alignment between US printings and certain UK printings, up until Houghton Mifflin branched out).

Feel free to PM me as well for some options.

And that’s a particularly good deal, Laurel? Uff-da. Well, I suppose at least that means I’d be able to resell it easily after I was done!

Ah, I knew of course that there were many corrections and minor changes, but I’d assumed the pagination was constant, as it seems it mostly was with the ’60s and ’70s 2nd editions from HMCo and A&U. If they’re different, that changes the calculus.

Oh, and I’d forgotten FR was completely re-typeset after the first printing, wasn’t it?

Are there perhaps only one or two particularly common paginations? Or if I go down this rabbit hole, will I find myself in A LITTLE MAZE OF TWISTING PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT?

I did a scan of Hammond's Bibliography, and I don't think the pagination was changed, just some typesetting errors fixed/introduced here and there.

It is interesting that the second Unwin printing of FR is actually smaller than the first.

I should clarify I mean smaller in height, shorter.