18 Apr, 2007
2007-4-18 12:53:38 PM UTC
I am interested in trying to find out quantities for bookplates in the Children of Hurin.
According to Reuters (A spokeswoman for HarperCollins, the British publisher of Tolkien's works, said Christopher had signed 750 copies of the book at his home in France.)
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/news ... JONC_0_India-294592-1.xmlIn New York 450 were meant to be available, and 50 were meant to be available in London, which totals 500, so 250 are 'missing'. I was at the London signing and I think they actually had about 200 bookplates which leaves 50 for publicity purposes (competitions, etc.).
This should give a more accurate idea of the rarity of these editions, if people agree with these numbers.
In London you could buy both the Deluxe and Ordinary Edition with bookplates in them, was this the same in New York? If so I am suprised that no bookplate Deluxe Editions have yet appeared on Ebay. Also in London, Alan Lee was in most cases (though not in all) signing on the title page and not the bookplate, so Christopher's signature is right at the top of the bookplate, he lelf space for Alan to sign as in the New York bookplates.
18 Apr, 2007
2007-4-18 2:08:37 PM UTC
I have seen a lot of confirmation on the 450 number for New York. They were all in trade copies, none in deluxe copies that I have heard of. Those deluxe copies in the UK are going to be quite scarce I think!
So far, about 15 copies have sold of the US trade edition on eBay through Buy-It-Now (BIN). One lucky soul beat me out to the $55 copy, a few went for about $125-150, and they have sold for as high as $350. There are about a dozen online right now with no BIN that have bids around $60 or so - I expect those will rise before the auctions end.
There is a steady stream onto eBay, so expect a lot more copies, and a lot of fluctuation in price (up or down). Let me know if anyone sees UK copies (trade or deluxe) hit eBay!
18 Apr, 2007
2007-4-18 8:31:05 PM UTC
I emailed this to you at rowns.com as well.
Check out auction # 200101282215. It's a UK trade with a CJRT signed bookplate and Alan Lee's signature on the title page.
18 Apr, 2007
2007-4-18 11:10:52 PM UTC
does anyone know just how many UK De luxes had book plates in them? was the 50 split equally among the Trade edition and the Deluxe?
or was there 50 of each? (or 200 as Trotter mentions)?
19 Apr, 2007
2007-4-19 7:36:00 AM UTC
At the UK event when you first went in, they had mainly trade copies with bookplates and a few Deluxe copies. They also had numerous copies of book volumes without bookplates and a supply of bookplates. So if you asked for a Deluxe version with a bookplate, they would put one in there and then.
This means that is pretty much impossible to say exactly how many of each exist. They had a lot of bookplates, and I think my guess of about 200 is probably pretty close. The first set of people into the store, such as myself, all bought 1 Deluxe and 1 Trade edition with bookplates, they stopped this after about the 15 person and just said that they could buy one copy only. I suspect that the later people in the queue only bought the trade version, because of the difference in price (£11.99 for Trade, £60 for Deluxe on the day).
The Trade copy on Ebay was bought by a family in front of me, who bought at least 5 copies of the Deluxe Version and 5 of the Trade (so I expect they have a few more copies to put on Ebay).
I am keeping both my copies though.
22 Apr, 2007
2007-4-22 5:55:19 AM UTC
Hi Trotter,
a Deluxe bookplated book has shown up on eBay now - looks to be from the family that was in front of you in line. Here is a quote from their auction: "only the first 8 people managed to get deluxe with book plate as they were put into books by staff at waterstones by mistake once in they could not remove so they had to sell like that so i was verry lucky"
Any feel for how many deluxe copies got bookplates from when you were there? The above quote feels mostly like hyperbole to get a higher eBay price to me.
22 Apr, 2007
2007-4-22 6:44:52 AM UTC
Rowns,
They were right in front of me in the queue, I am actually in the picture of the book signing at the top right at the back of the picture.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... dexURL=4#ebayphotohosting This is the family that bought at least one copy each of both books and I think there were five of them.
Waterstone's may have made a 'mistake' in putting the bookplates in the Deluxe Version, and this would explain why there are no US Deluxe copies.
Waterstones had no books with the bookplates in, Waterstone's staff inserted them. If I take what they have said as being true, then they had not realised when I passed that they should not put bookplates in both books, so you are looking at a lot more than eight books.
So two possibilities.
1 - Waterstone's made a mistake, probably 20-30 Deluxe copies with bookplates exist.
2 - They did not make a mistake, I still think they had about 200 bookplates in total and I would guess 1/3 went into the Deluxe books, about 65 books.
26 Apr, 2007
2007-4-26 7:09:03 PM UTC
I am impressed with the latest copy on Ebay from the family in front of me in the queue at Waterstones, though disappointed that they did not ask for my autograph (they seem to have everybody else who was there)
8 times signed Children of Hurin on EbayThey have also included the bill for what they bought, 4 x Trade, 5 x Deluxe. I hope they would keep at least one copy of each, so these are probably the last for sale from them.
They could however, have bought five Trade copies so I don't know why they only got four.
26 Apr, 2007
2007-4-26 8:02:56 PM UTC
That auction is nuts! Any guesses for how high that will go? I like the Nasmith drawing a lot. I'm not sure if it belongs in this book, but I would not complain!
26 Apr, 2007
2007-4-26 11:49:42 PM UTC
It is interesting Nasmith added that, though it is a wonderful little sketch. Beleg meets Gollum; sounds like a bad piece of fanfic!
I bet that will reach £500 at least before the 9 days are up.
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