Saturday, June 19, 2010

Trixie Belden and Ginny Gordon Artwork

For a number of months, an eBay seller has offered items from the archives of the Golden Press/Western Publishing Company. The offerings include uncirculated file copies of books and all other items sold by the company over the decades, plus the original artwork for many of the items.

The artwork for the 1970s edition of Trixie Belden and the Red Trailer Mystery sold for $247.28.


The artwork for the 1970s edition of Trixie Belden and the Mystery in Arizona sold for $409.06.


The artwork for Ginny Gordon and the Missing Heirloom sold for $260.00.


One lot contained all of the artwork for the 1960s deluxe edition of Trixie Belden and the Gatehouse Mystery. The auction closed at $1,128.78.



To be clear, I did not purchase any of these lots. I copied the pictures from the seller's auctions so that we can all enjoy the images.

11 comments:

Jenn Fisher said...

So interesting! I hadn't seen those. Notice that for this artwork cover that just ended: 140415347427 is the item number - that one of the bidders who bid a ton with only 6 feedback shows up as "not a registered user" - I wonder what was up with that. This person also bid on another Trixie cover that just sold too. Looks like the same buyer won both of those paintings.

Jenn:)

Jennifer White said...

I wondered what was up with that bidder during the course of those auctions. The auctions would have still sold high without that bidder, but that is a good example of why I NEVER bid until the final 10 seconds of the auction.

I call what that bidder did "silly bidding games," and unfortunately, many low feedback bidders, even legitimate ones, do that. They have no common sense and no understanding of when they need to quit. The only way to protect myself from them is to hold my bid until the last 10 seconds of the auction.

A lot of people think that staking their claim is the best way to win an auction, and I did that during my first six months on eBay, until I figured out I was paying too much. I have probably saved many thousands of dollars by sniping.

www.esnipe.com

I highly recommend eSnipe.

The person who won the Trixie Belden artwork auctions will probably win all of them. That person seems to have an unlimited amount in funds, and I suspect that her high bid has been at least five thousand dollars. However, she'd save some money if she would just snipe them.

Benny said...

No, it's pretty obvious that the underbidder knew EXACTLY what he or she was doing.

Jennifer White said...

I'm not sure if you are implying shill bidding, but the seller is still a registered user, so I tend to think not. Checking the privatized bidding history of the bidder, they bid on plenty of auctions from other sellers, so I don't think this is shill bidding. Yes, I am good at spotting shill bidders. I have turned in multiple sellers for shill bidding.

If you are seeing something that I am not, then please explain.

Now if you are implying that the bidder vengefully forced the closing bid up high out of spite, this is very possible. See my previous comment on eSnipe. People who bid high need to protect themselves from this type of activity, regardless of whether the buyer does it out of vengeance, ignorance, or shill bidding.

I still contend that the behavior of the bidder is the same pattern followed by people who really, really, really want an item and can't face the fact that they cannot outbid the highest bidder. I recall losing to one of these people one time, then the seller told me that the buyer backed out because she couldn't afford it. I'm sure you're all thinking shill bidding, but I am confident that this was not the case, since when I stated that it was not fair for me to have to pay over $100 for the book, the seller ran a fresh auction starting low. This is an example of when someone bids unthinkingly and regrets it immediately after the close of the auction.

In the end, it little matters why the under bidder did it; the winning bidder would have paid less if she had sniped the lots.

Benny said...

Certainly NOT shill bidding. But still obvious what is going on.

ebay has no reason to fix that flaw in their process.

Jennifer White said...

I wish you would explain what you mean instead of being so cryptic. I still know no more than from your first comment. I guess I'm being dense.

?

Jennifer White said...

Are you talking about one-click bidding? Help me out, here. It still amounts to the same thing as entering an amount, in the end. Of course eBay isn't going to fix it since they encourage bidders to act stupid.

Shelley said...

I recently bought the current hardcover edition of 'Gatehouse Mystery' on Amazon (high quality binding, paper, and typeface!), which has black and white internal illustrations by Mary Stevens. My husband commented that Trixie strongly resembles Sally from 'Dick and Jane'. I don't remember the Cello version having illustrations, were these done for the Cameo edition, maybe around '54?

Jennifer White said...

I'm pretty sure that the Mary Stevens illustrations were in the cello editions. I believe they were also in the cameo editions.

T Miller said...

Hi, I own the original artwork for Trixie Belden and the Mystery on Cobbett's Island (I bought it on eBay several years ago when the original publishing house was clearing their archives.) I will be putting the collection up for sale on eBay withing the next several weeks. If this is something that your readers would be interested in, can I notify you when the art goes up for sale? I myself ran across the Publishing House sale by accident, and was sorry I missed out on several of my favorite titles (been a fan since 1967). Thanks, T. Miller

At Home Together said...

Thank you for sharing these. I love the Ginny Gordon especially.