Matte/glossy white/golden HC logo

Mainly depends on when the book was published from what I've been able to determine.

The Children of Hurin and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún for example were first released back in 2007 and 2009 and HarperCollins choose to release them with a Glossy dustjacket. Later for whatever reason, HC shifted towards printing their dustjackets in matte.

At least with CoH, printings more recently have had a matte dustjacket and the HC logo in white, so it matches the more recent style/trend. Though B&L and FoG 1st printings have dustjackets that are more semi-gloss (or maybe Satin is the better/more accurate description?) but again, later/more recent printings from what I've observed are now in the matte dustjackets as well.

Someone here with more knowledge or connections with HC might know the reason for why they opted to move towards the matte dustjacket style.

I've never seen anyone on here talk about "collecting" matte jackets tbh. And I've only ever read this being discussed in detail on reddit; that, and spine lettering alignment. Without coming across as dismissive of collecting to this level of minutiae (I'd be the one to talk!), can I ask why this matters? It's interesting, not denying. But, for me, a 2007 first impression of CoH trumps any white-logo matte-jacketed reprint every time. Priority of printing, for me, is very important, as it's important in bibliographical terms and in the history of textual studies. Later impression dustjacket coating/finishing, not so much...

Although somehow I do like uniformity ?‍♂️, it’s not that I find that terribly important.

I’m just really curious as to why the differences in dustjackets. And if it has any meaning.

I think I also read somewhere that the boxed set Hobbit+LOTR with a golden logo is harder to find.
So I’m also interested in why this is.And why they change it sometimes.

The golden logo must have a meaning don’t you think?

The colours that they have used have changed over the 30 years that they have been producing Tolkien books.

I spoke about this last week with HC, and it appears that white is now the preferred colour for the monogram, J.R.R. Tolkien and the HC logo, but white does not always work depending on the background, so other colours may be used.

At some point, they may decide to change the 'default' colour again, it is not set in stone.

NDJ wrote:

Although somehow I do like uniformity ?‍♂️, it’s not that I find that terribly important.

I’m just really curious as to why the differences in dustjackets. And if it has any meaning.

I think I also read somewhere that the boxed set Hobbit+LOTR with a golden logo is harder to find.
So I’m also interested in why this is.And why they change it sometimes.

The golden logo must have a meaning don’t you think?

I don't, no. Time passes. Someone decided to make it white. They did glossy, then they didn't. These book releases span decades in some cases. I think the answers you seek were pretty much covered by Velmeran, and also addressed by Trotter.

I do think it's interesting to document these changes though. But, beyond design choices, I don't believe there is any suggestion of any hidden meaning behind these changes.

Ok thanks guys!

Was hoping that a gold foil monogram meant something cool……?