Unwin 1966 Hobbit paperback

Took a small video. 60mb. Doesn't seem to allow me upload it here. Do you want to PM me an email address to WeTransfer it to?

I found a first printing of the 1966 Unwin paperback (sixteenth impression). The book is a bit rough and the last few pages are detached.
But what surprised me is that pages 217 to 248 are mounted upside down !
This printing is ultra rare, and that's pretty funny to find one with a printing error.

Found one! After checking a zillion copies the last 2 years on ebay and abebooks. Pictures when I receive it. Will check it for phenomena like emilien found.

northman wrote:

Found one! After checking a zillion copies the last 2 years on ebay and abebooks. Pictures when I receive it. Will check it for phenomena like emilien found.

Amazing northman, I think we may be bond concerning some Tolkien Books...

Great job, you two! Wow these are really coming out of the wood work now. I knew of one that had been sitting on ABE for a few months from JRRT books in Ireland which has now sold. Perhaps one of the two here was that one?

Mr. Underhill wrote:

Great job, you two! Wow these are really coming out of the wood work now. I knew of one that had been sitting on ABE for a few months from JRRT books in Ireland which has now sold. Perhaps one of the two here was that one?

Not mine. I paid £5 on ebay for this one. :)
The half of the copyright page was shown on the listing, but it was enough for me to make me notice that there was no 17th impression written below the 16th :D

That was me. Nicely sorted out with Aaron.

I do wonder if we will start to see more of these pop up as there is a little more awareness of them. My gut feel tells me there are more of them out there than it might appear from the collector's copies that we know about. There is always just an awful lot of noise to signal when hunting - I know I could only ever be bothered to look half-arsedly, occasionally having a poke through eBay. I only found mine as it was pretty much shoved under my nose, due to being local to me.

The one thing I do note about the extant copies of all impressions is that they mostly seem to have been read. Even decent condition copies tend to have the signs of use. Not always the case with more recent paperback editions. Back from the days when people actually bought books to read...

Heh, I think I have one of these, the cover is held on by tape...