Books 1-8 pricing???

[dandylan]

I ordered books 1-8 from Mongoose a while back but gave up on collecting the whole series. I am thinking of selling them but I have no idea what price to charge. I see crazy things like this:

www.amazon.com/Lone-Wolf-8-Jungle-Horrors/dp/1905850727/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1465835983&sr=8-11&keywords=lone+wolf+8

Near as I can tell, books 1,4, and 8 are worth a great deal more than the others. If I sell them, I am going to sell all 8 as a set. Does anyone have suggestions for what they are worth?

Note: Sorry I posted this to the wrong forum by accident so I moved it here after deleting the old post.

_{[Moved to General Discussion since The Books and the World is intended for discussions of book contents, not sales. / Mod]}

[duk3]

Here is Jungle of horrors for 36 euro
www.ebay.ie/itm/The-Jungle-of-Horrors-Joe-Dever-Lone-Wolf-HB-Collectors-edition-/282065879958?hash=item41ac6fc396:g:wowAAOSwbYZXXRFW
All will be reissued by Joe Dever(Holmgard Press), although it will take a few years

[marksmith]

8 isn't worth anywhere near that much.

I bought book 6, 7 and 8 for £0.99 on ebay a few weeks ago, the owner of mongoose usually puts an auction for those 3 up every Friday, there's quite a lot of overstock still trickling on to the market.

As a general guide, ignore the crazy prices on amazon and search ebay's sold listings.

Anywhere between £30-£50 is the going rate for 1-5, although the price will probably drop once more people hear about the holmgard reprint.

So, it's a bit of a mixed bag, try selling £1-5 for £40 each, or £30 if you want to shift them fast. 6,7,8 will require a bit more luck to sell, might be good to simply include them in a set to sweeten the deal. £120-£150 for the lot is probably sensible.

[50crowns]

Hmm...I sold my extra copies of Mongoose 1-13 for $850 US after originally posting them for $1000 US on Ebay. I wasn't trying to be too greedy, but wanted to reflect what I originally paid for them (plus a small profit) and also what they seemed to be going for on the open market. The ones I sold were pristine later edition Mongoose copies, meaning that they were more error-free than the earlier print runs and were of identical binding (same book height and had the rounded binding). Some of them are worth $100-200 US each (1-5) and some are rather cheap ($20 US). I didn't want to sell each individually as I didn't want to end up with the leftovers after the rarer ones were cherry-picked and I also wanted the set to go to a collector that wanted a clean and complete set - someone who would appreciate them. In my experience - and part of why I stopped trying to collect a second set was that it seemed that certain copies (14, 15 and 16) are exceedingly hard to find and that it was unlikely that I would be able to complete the full set through 20 (the Grand Master Series).

I'd guess that 1-8 (if they are good copies) are probably worth $500-650 US

[duk3]

Crazy to pay those kind of prices now that they are going to be reissued and all in the same format.(i.e Holmgard Press) Book 29 has sold 1600+ copies so far.
If you are going to sell the lot I think 250GBP might get you a buyer.
Now If you had Book 15 you would get a packet for that book!

[Black Cat]

What is your version of book 8? The first version Mongoose published (and send to the Mega-Deal buyers) was missing the last two sections of the bonus adventure. As a consequence, Mongoose sent a corrected version: I now own both a good and a defective version of book 8.

Since there's probably twice as much more copies of book 8 (both good and defective versions) on the market, its price should not be very high. It should also be a little bit lower if it is the defective version.

[dandylan]

Thank you all for your help on this. I will have to see what version I have for book 8. It was really frustrating to see the issues Mongoose had which also factored into my decision to stop collecting them.

[Black Cat]

If the bonus adventure has 152 sections, it is the good version.

[dandylan]

Well I guess I'm good for book 8 since it has the 152 sections that Black Cat mentioned (Thank you Black Cat). For the other 7 books, are there some other defects I should look for and advertise when I sell them? 50crowns mentioned if they are "good copies" they would sell better.

I did check and books 2 and 4 have flat spines but the others are all rounded and they are the same height (Thanks 50crowns). I didn't know about the spines or height thing. This is really maddening trying to keep up with all the nuances of the Mongoose editions. I'm bummed I couldn't collect them since I loved the paperbacks I played when I was a kid (they literally fell apart from being played too much). I'm a little OCD and would probably have driven myself insane trying to collect the books LOL.

If Holmgard is truly going to republish the whole series, I might try collecting them again. I wonder if years down the road, the Mongoose editions will be worth more due to their imperfections? Kind of like stamps, coins, etc. that were released with image defects. I guess the main questions is how long it will take to republish all the previous books and how much will they cost. It really is a shame that no other publishers stepped up to the table for the project. Too bad we couldn't get Easton Press GIANT-sized editions LOL. Just kidding. Way overkill (I'd still have bought them).

Is book 15 the hardest to find? Out of curiosity, how much does it go for and how many were made? I didn't see any on Ebay when I looked.

[marksmith]

I really don't think imperfections will add any value at all in the long run, with a gamebook, you want to be able to read and play it; if there's a defect there it stops you from bring able to do that, it's like buying a rare sega saturn game with a scratch on the cd that makes it stop working halfway through gameplay. It will have value to a very small minority of very hardcore collectors who want it to go on the shelf and stay there.

The Holmgard reprints will be great since there's the opportunity to get a personalized signed copy of all of them direct from Joe himself, for £17 I'm happy to spend that every few months whenever a new one is released. I don't need two sets of the same hardbacks from different publishers in the same way that I don't need every printing/ edition of the paperbacks, especially not the US editions that had missing paragraphs.

[duk3]

I had a couple of spare 14's and 16's which I sold for 200 euros each. Never saw a spare 15 on Ebay....ever!! so I guess the value would exceed 200.(However that being said now that Joe has produced a printing plan I doubt even if they were to appear online they would get this kind of money)
Ill be repurchasing all the Holmgard Press issues as they are released.