Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #17

A recent auction for The Mystery of the Fire Dragon is worthy of mention for more than one reason.

Nancy Drew #38 The Mystery Of the Fire Dragon w/ DJ 1st Item #250321847008

First, the seller copied and pasted information directly from my website and inserted in the listing. This is plagiarism and not cool. Second, the seller also used two of my photos and displayed them by linking to my website, thus using my data transfer, also known as bandwidth. This is even more not cool. Fortunately, I am nowhere near my limit in data transfer, so a little bandwidth theft is not going to cause me extra fees. However, if I were someone with a free site, I would have very little data transfer included in my plan, so a seller linking to photos on my site could cause problems, such as shutting down my site.

Linking to another person's photos is also very foolish. I saw this listing before it closed, and I could have changed those photos to something else in order to mess up the auction. I have better things to do than mess with auctions, but I have seen multiple cases in which website owners have changed photos to insulting messages such as "This seller is a scammer!" when sellers have directly linked to their photo files.

Now to the real reason for mentioning this auction. The seller states, "Meets all of Farah's first issue points for both the book & the dust jacket. First printing 1961. Refer to the photo (#4)." I am a little skeptical of whether this seller has a Farah's Guide and whether this seller really knows what the first printing points are. The seller does not state why the book is the first printing, which is a big red flag. Buyers should be wary of any listing that states a book is the first printing without giving a specific reason why. Even if the listing states why, buyers should be aware that the seller might still be wrong.

I am not certain which photo is the fourth photo, since I do not know whether the seller counted the photos going horizontally or vertically. Regardless, the way to tell whether Fire Dragon is the first printing is by the interior list of titles, which is not pictured. This is why I feel that the seller really did not know. The seller did picture the copyright page which means nothing. The seller's "photo (#4)" might be the photo in which the date 4/29/61 appears, indicating that this book is from 1961. The problem is that there were three 1961 printings, each with the identical dust jacket.

This seller also received a question from a potential buyer:

Question: What is the last Nancy Drew book title on the list inside the front of the book? thank you.

Answer: The Mystery Of the Fire Dragon. I can post a photo of this tomorrow.

This is an unclear question. If the potential buyer meant the front flap of the dust jacket, then the question was unnecessary. The Mystery of the Fire Dragon was the last Nancy Drew book printed in dust jacket. Since there were no more titles printed in dust jacket after Fire Dragon and since all Nancy Drew books switched to picture cover at the exact same time, Fire Dragon cannot list to the next title on the dust jacket. All three dust jackets are identical and list to Fire Dragon on the front flap.

If the potential buyer meant the interior list of titles, asking for the last title listed was not enough information in order to determine whether the book is the first printing. Both the first and the third printing books list to Fire Dragon in the interior list.

The true first printing of Fire Dragon lists Nancy Drew to Fire Dragon and Dana Girls to Bamboo Bird in the interior list of titles. The second printing of Fire Dragon lists Nancy Drew to Fire Dragon followed by Lilac Inn and lists Dana Girls to Bamboo Bird in the interior list of titles. The third printing of Fire Dragon lists Nancy Drew to Fire Dragon and Dana Girls to Sierra Gold in the interior list of titles. All three dust jackets are completely identical, so there is never any need to ask about the dust jacket lists for Fire Dragon.