Most of the wrappers did not survive, so the wrapper is rare. This particular wrapper is in outstanding condition. The auction closed at $1,864.63. Farah's Guide values the wrapper at $1,200.
A second auction with the photoplay wrapper surfaced just after the first auction closed.
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This second auction closed at $1,050.00. Based on the winning bidder's user ID, I believe that the book was purchased to resell. I could be wrong, but the buyer is an antiquarian bookseller who does not specialize in series books, which is how I draw my conclusion.
I would love to own this wrapper, but I am not willing to pay a high price for it. The Bonita Granville movie items are all neat, but I personally would not want to pay very much for any of them. They are a very low priority for me. That takes me far out of the running for these auctions.
If I were going to purchase one of these wrappers, I would only be interested in the first auction for the one that was not faded. The second one would be of no interest unless it fell into my hands very inexpensively. To me, the two wrappers are in profoundly different condition, and the second one is far less desirable than the first one. If I were to purchase the wrapper, I would want to display it in a frame, and the faded part is a huge flaw. In my opinion, the second wrapper is only worth around 25% to 33% as much as the first wrapper. Either the first wrapper sold too low, or the second wrapper sold too high. I'll let you draw your own conclusion as to which is true.
Another interesting auction was for the first printing book of Nancy's Mysterious Letter.
The first printing of Nancy's Mysterious Letter lists to The Clue in the Diary in the post-text ads. This auction closed at $118.28, and the book does not have a dust jacket. Multiple later printings list to Nancy's Mysterious Letter in the post-text ads, and those books are often mistaken as the first printing.
The first printing listing to The Clue in the Diary is extremely scarce and is one of the toughest first printing books to acquire. This first printing is harder to find than nearly all of the blank endpapers first printings, with the possible exception of the first printing of The Mystery at Lilac Inn.
2 comments:
The second wrapper looks like it was added to the book/DJ sometime after the fact, given the apparent lack of fading on the DJ itself. Might have been from a printing that did not originally come with the wrapper, only to be removed when the correct one was found. What are your thoughts about the "ethics" of swapping books and DJs, or in this case potentially the wrapper, to fit desired printings?
I think one has to consider how he or she would feel as a prospective buyer. I would not mind purchasing the wrapper knowing that it had been switched from one book to another, so long as the result has the correct printing matched with the wrapper. I would also not mind purchasing the wrapper matched with the wrong printing, because the book and jacket are now worth around $50. Creating a match would not be a problem.
And I guess I answered with my opinion right there. I do not mind switching books and jackets so long as the end result is still a match. I would not switch the wrapper to a book and jacket that do not match.
I don't worry about this sort of thing at all when I purchase books. If the book and jacket match a certain Farah's Guide printing, I actually have no way of knowing whether they have always been matched together. Anyone could have switched them any number of times.
I do have a problem with people taking much later jackets and placing them on blank endpaper editions and then selling them as valuable blank endpaper editions with jackets. That is totally wrong, and we have seen people do that.
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