The frontispiece?

Gerryt wrote:

Looks great, would love to see a good photo of the new cover painting

Tall Hobbit wrote:

The frontispiece?

Gerryt wrote:

Looks great, would love to see a good photo of the new cover painting

Thank you :)

The late Stu wrote:

Mr. Underhill wrote:

Just an FYI for those are have received their copies or are getting them in the coming days, look through them carefully. Mine arrived yesterday (#340). Unfortunately it is missing a section of seven tipped in illustrations in the middle chapters of the book.

I have been in contact with Folio customer service today and am waiting on a response as to how to resolve this. Be sure to check your copies for this issue, hopefully this is a one off and I am the only one. As you can see the pages are present, just no images for the middle seven. Circled in the second image are the illustrations missing.

I had this idea that after all the problems with LotR that Folio and LEGO would have learned something, yet I haven't seen a picture of a fault-free copy yet (though I'm sure they exist -- maybe Trotter's?). I guess at least with your copy, it can be remanufactured and have the illustrations added fairly easily. With the LoTR remanufacturing by Smith-Settle you didn't get the copies back fixed, you got random other "fixed" (i.e. not actually fixed) copies back, so you could end up in a worse situation than you started. Though in the case of 7 missing illustrations, you would be hard pushed to be worse!!!

I have gotten a stock response from Folio yesterday evening my time. They are forwarding my images to the "design team" to see how to "best address this issue" but probably won't hear anything until early next week. I'm sure they will want me to send it back so it can be repaired.

Oh bother!

eBay listings seem to be notable for the number that are now selling at only a fairly small premium over the RRP, now the flurry of interest has died down. I think there will be a few scalpers that need to hold onto these for a much longer term to make a profit.

The late Stu you prompted me to grab a bit of stats while the data is still available from eBay:

39 listings have sold on eBay so far, from $1068 (£850) to $1508 (£1220, or a 100% markup). Only five of those are marked as "best offer accepted" (which we cannot track what the actual sale price was). For the Best Offer Accepted, I left the price at the asking price in the following chart. The asking prices for those five were $1508, $1319, $1445, $1535, and $1256. Excluding those gives a median of $1257 and mean of $1298.

21 of those sold on Nov 19. Only one a day has sold starting Nov 24. One just sold while I wrote this for $1200 (£955).



There are currently 20 active listings. Between those and the sold listings, that's 6% (60 out of 1000) that were immediately offered for resale on eBay.

I will note that from the USA getting this edition direct from The Folio Society (including taxes and shipping) cost me $960 (£765).

Urulókë wrote:

@thelatestu you prompted me to grab a bit of stats while the data is still available from eBay:

39 listings have sold on eBay so far, from $1068 (£850) to $1535 (£1220, or a 100% markup). 21 of those sold on Nov 19. Only one a day has sold starting Nov 24. One just sold while I wrote this for $1200 (£955).



There are currently 20 active listings. Between those and the sold listings, that's 6% (60 out of 1000) that were immediately offered for resale on eBay.

I will note that from the USA getting this edition direct from The Folio Society (including taxes and shipping) cost me $960 (£765).

Great analysis, thank you! I was wondering myself about those metrics. Makes me wonder whether this type of premium is worth the effort… but I guess some people do this as their business..

edit: Actually if the average premium is 400£ I think its not a bad deal for those flipping.. I misread the first time and thought the average premium was £200 from UK price

I think there are 6 new full color arts: cover, endpapers, frontispiece, card, 2 new arts replace "Into the Lone-lands" and "Riddles in the Dark" but keep the title. And the slipcase appear to be "Mirkwood". (It was tailored in 2020 Tolkien calendar. This seems to be the first time the full art appears in a book).

Side question: when was "The Green Dragon Inn" first added to the illustrations of The Hobbit?

zionius wrote:

Side question: when was "The Green Dragon Inn" first added to the illustrations of The Hobbit?

Not 100% sure so maybe someone can confirm, but I think it appeared for the first time on the back of the dustjacket of this edition: https://tolkienbooks.net/php/details2.php?id=193

It’s definitely not on the back cover of that edition or within. In book form it’s in the Roast Mutton chapter of the HarperCollins 2020 edition, for sure. I believe it may well have been available only in a calendar before 2020?

It's on the rear cover of the UK 13th printing of the 1997 Alan Lee Illustrated Edition.

From memory (might not be remembering 100%) - it is on the rear DJ of the 13th to 17th Printings.

It also appears on the rear cover of some Foreign Translations of the same edition.

And on the rear cover of the last USA HMH printing(s) of this edition (and on William Morrow printings).