Saw this and wished I were rich......
 

Well having my latest copy of LOTR disintegrate I am in the market for a replacement.... but alas it won't be this...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...sPageName=WDVW

Actually, if I had those, I'd be afraid to ever use them or anything. I'd stuff them in a nice airtight glass case and leave them there.

This would, however, still leave me without usable copies, so maybe it is just as well that I am dirt poor.

Well, I was saving for a trip to England, but this might be a better cause...

a bit of a cop out that the books are only signed by the RECIPIENT of the letters.

I wouldn't mind an original LETTER from tolkien though, I suppose.

Even if I had that kind of money, I wouldn't get it. I mean it would be neat to have such a thing, but there are many instances where the stuff you buy off the internet isn't really what you paid for. A lot of the times it's just imitations. It would be neat to get my hands on it (if it was what it says it is).

Cheap at the price
 

When surely you really want this .

Wow!
 

...drool, drool, drool...

Bah I say. What's all this hoarding of relics?

Next someone will be auctioning off the cutlery from the Tolkien family table, or perhaps the letter-opening knife which Tolkien used and calling it a relic from some barrow. Or mayhap a brooch of Edith's. Me? I 'm holding out for a bottle of the last waters that flooded over Meneltarma. ;)

wow *whistles* spiffy

My dad's copies of LOTR are like that. Though it's not the first edition, it's the revised edition, but it looks the same to me.
But I don't think it's worth it to buy those books. You'd never want to read them. Which kinda defeats the purpose.

My copy is...torn and ripped, and faded and old, and not very nice to look at, but you can still read it!!! :D

But I would read them - just maybe not in the bath.... and I would put them down carefully not just shove it under the pillow... and as for the money - yes it is a lot but sometimes it depends on your priorities. I mean some people spend a lot of money on cars I mean this is out of my league, if you bought a new beamer it would have lost the price of the first edition as you drove it out of the showroom...... And apparently the average price of a wedding in the UK is now £17K ..... makes a first edition LOTR seem a bargain .... and you know it will last a lifetime.... but if I had £2K+ to spare now I would go back to NZ......

If I had such an edition then I would read them, but carefully, and without a ciggie on the go. I always think a book is meant to be read, so I would have to read even the most expensive editions, but I'd store them in a North facing room to keep 'em safe from the nassty yellow face. :)

With collecting, a thing is only really 'worth' as much as you are willing to pay for it; if you want it really badly then you will pay more. This is what makes collecting a risky investment. You might think, to take a recently topical item, action figures would increase in value over time, but you can never be sure as changing tastes in collectables and antiques dictate the market prices, as collectors of ivory and tortoiseshell have found out to their cost. The best advice I've heard is only to invest in something because you find it desirable yourself, and I like those books a lot, but do I like them enough to splash out all that much money? My favourite copy is still the battered paperback set I first read when I was a youngster, and that's worth more to me than any other edition.

Well my first set of paperbacks survived long enough to be ' lent' ( it tends to be a fairly permanent arrangement where she is concerned :D ) , to my god daughter after she saw the first film but they were already reinforced with aging sellotape and ROTK self destructed as she read it leaving her to kidnap her brother's one volume edition.

I then bought the film edition paperbacks and once again ROTK is the first casualty having lost the back cover. I think I do need hard backs.... :(

No matter how battered they get, don't ever throw them away, as you may regret it one day! I daren't hazard a guess as to how many copies of each of the books there are in the house now, but each has its own non-monetary value. I obtained a nice box set of 1970's editions for davem recently, and though neither rare nor perfect, they were what he wanted and as such, valuable in their own right.

But for cheap editions, e-bay is your place to go. Or obscure book fairs, where a first edition of The Sil was snapped up for just £2.50 the other day. :p

Well the originals, I would have kept regardless ( were they not still with GD ..) since they are the originals and bring back memories .... (the edition with the elvish letters in a circle and the red eye.... bought about 1980? ) ... an dI was looking on Ebay when I found the above....... :D

I recently got a US first edition of Silm at a used book store for about $9 US. It's great! :D :D


Between the two of us, my brother and I have 4 copies of LotR, 2 of the Hobbit, and 2 of Silm. Everything else we only have one of, or just don't own. :p

This IS a bit steep....
 

since the book was merely owned by him ....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...sPageName=WDVW

and I don't have Tolkien's interest in Gothic....