Saturday, October 18, 2008

My Betty Gordon Books

I recently upgraded three of my Betty Gordon books. My set is finally beginning to look pretty good on the shelf:


Of course this means that I once again have some Betty Gordon books with dust jackets to sell. I also have an extra of Betty Gordon and the Mystery Girl in dust jacket which has a nicer spine than mine but the front panel is slightly worse. My extra of Mystery Girl is my second extra of that title, but I have failed to upgrade the one in my collection both times since the extras have not been better to my satisfaction. Perhaps I will upgrade it, someday. I'd also like to upgrade Rainbow Ranch and Mystery Farm eventually.

The books that I upgraded are Lost Pearls, Campus, and Hale Twins, so sometime soon I will sell those titles with dust jackets. I also have an extra of Mystery Farm that does not have a dust jacket, and as previously mentioned, I have an extra of Mystery Girl with dust jacket.

When I first assembled my set of Betty Gordon books, I had to settle for several titles in bare books without dust jackets. I also had to be satisfied with several rough condition dust jackets. The Betty Gordon series is a somewhat difficult set to build, so it is necessary to settle for books and jackets that are not in top condition unless one wishes to spend years trying to build a set.

The Betty Gordon and Ruth Fielding series were heavily cross-promoted, so they are like sister series. This is why I have a poll asking which of the two series people like better. I'm not surprised that Ruth Fielding has more votes, since the Ruth Fielding books seem to be much more abundant. However, I feel that the Betty Gordon series is a better series overall, from start to finish. The Ruth Fielding series is quite good towards the end, but I feel that the earlier titles are much weaker than the later titles. Once my poll ends, I'm going to create a more specific poll about the two series. I suspect that the people who voted that they like Ruth Fielding better may not have read both series. I have read both and like Betty Gordon better.

2 comments:

Lisa K said...

Hi Jennifer, This is Lisa K from the Sleuth group. What will be your prices on the Betty Gordons?

Jennifer White said...

Probably something like $35.00 each for the ones with dust jackets. It depends upon the condition and what I paid. The one without a dust jacket would be less for sure. I'll decide for sure when I list them. I might go ahead and do it tomorrow. I finally listed some stuff on Saturday and am trying to get myself back into listing books for sale.