Thursday, December 26, 2013

Nicely Colored Nancy Drew Illustrations

Any type of writing inside a book is a flaw, whether the writing is a price, a name, or an inscription.  Occasionally, I run across books in which one or more illustrations have been colored, and this is considered a significant flaw and would in most cases make a book undesirable.

I have held onto a Nancy Drew book with colored illustrations for ten years because I love how very nice the illustrations look.  The book is an ordinary copy of The Bungalow Mystery in the picture cover edition from the 1960s.  I have no need of the book in my collection except for the fact that I love the coloring. 


I have the book in plastic marked as one with colored illustrations.  I want to make sure I remember why I have this book that is not in the best of shape and is not needed for my collection for any other reason.


Here are the delightfully colored illustrations.






No doubt the original owner loved and enjoyed this book.  I hope that others find this book as neat as I do.

6 comments:

A Candle to Read By said...

I love this although I agree that typically these would make a book less valuable. Some time ago you posted a picture of a book with coloring or markings and stated, "someone's going to get a spanking" or something like that. I laughed out loud. Thanks for posting these pics.

Jennifer White said...

That comment would have been from Jennifer Fisher (who is not me) in her blog. The post might be from one of these.

Scary Things Kids Do

A Candle to Read By said...

Thanks! I am sorry to have confused you two, once again.

Phyl said...

Personally, I like it when there is a name written inside the book. It's always neat to see who owned it before me. I love it when it says something like "This is a really good book."

JackWayne said...

Since you mentioned flaws, say a book has a missing endpaper, in my case a 1930s red edition Hardy book. In your opinion, how much does that decrease the value, in terms of percentage? I'm asking as a potential buyer, not seller.

Jennifer White said...

I can't put an exact figure on it. A missing endpaper does decrease value, but the prospective buyer has to decide to what degree.

Speaking for myself, for common books, I would not end up keeping a book that is missing an endpaper. For scarce books, I would prefer not to keep a book missing an endpaper, but having the book is more important a consideration than worrying about the endpaper.