Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Nancy Drew Picture Cover Anomaly

I was preparing to list a set of Nancy Drew books when I noticed that The Whispering Statue had the back cover all in black print. I decided to pull that copy out of the set and keep it for now.


Normally, "Solve these Thrilling Mystery Stories with NANCY DREW" and "By CAROLYN KEENE" are in red ink. This is just the third picture cover book from the 1970s that I have seen with the all black print back cover. I have seen thousands of Nancy Drew picture covers from the 1970s, so for this to be only the third one I have seen with the print all in black makes it a scarce anomaly.

It is not mentioned in Farah's Guide, and my opinion is that these books are probably subsets of certain print runs. This book lists to Parchment on the back cover and on the order form inside the book, so it matches the points for the 1977A-66 printing according to Farah's 12th edition.

The other two books that I have seen like this one have been two copies of The Secret of Mirror Bay. Both copies of Mirror Bay list to Parchment on the back cover and on the order form inside the book, so they match the points for the 1977B-9 printing. One of the books has the gray overstamp of the price on the back cover, changing the price to $2.95. The other one has the identical back cover to the above book.


All three books are from 1977 and list to the same title on the back cover and on the order form. All three books are from printings in which Farah states that some copies have the gray overstamp of the price. I wonder how many other Nancy Drew books ended up with this anomaly? Does anyone else have any of them?

1 comment:

Robert said...

That's interesting, I'm going to have to check my set when I have a chance. (They're still all at my dad's house.)