Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #35

Nancy Drew Mystery Stories- Lot of 2 Books Item #110441656908

This auction was for two Nancy Drew books with dust jackets. The seller stated that the books have the wartime conditions notice, which dates the books to World War II. The seller stated that one book lists to Missing Map and the other one to Moss-Covered Mansion. The seller also stated that the books were printed around 1942-1943.

Question: Please send pictures of the book without the dust jacket. Are they blue cloth or tweed? Orange on blue or blue on blue? Are the inside end papers orange?

Answer: Yes books are orange lettering on blue. and inside Orange figures/pictures

The buyer's questions were all unnecessary. While the seller did not state the requested information in the original description, the books were printed during the early 1940s (for multiple reasons given by the seller and mentioned above). All Nancy Drew books from the early 1940s have orange print on the cover and orange silhouette endpapers. The prospective buyer asked whether the books are tweed. The tweed books did not come along until the 1950s, so the books cannot be tweed. Please see my Nancy Drew formats page for this information.

Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #34

1933 NANCY DREW THE PASSWORD TO LARKSPUR LANE Item #220488653044

Question: Is there printing on the reverse side of the dust jacket or is it blank? Thank you.

Answer: THERE IS PRINTING ON THE REVERSE SIDE OF THE DUST JACKET.

The prospective buyer was asking the question in order to determine whether the dust jacket is the first/second printing dust jacket, which are identical. Only the first/second printing dust jacket has the print on the reverse side.

While the seller did not show the reverse side of the dust jacket, one of the photos contained the information that the buyer was seeking. It is something that I always watch for when a seller shows a photo of either flap of an early dust jacket. Here is the important photo:


Notice along the extreme right edge of the back flap that something is printed in red ink. The only Nancy Drew dust jackets that have that message on them in red ink are the ones that have lists of books printed on the reverse side of the dust jacket. Therefore, this dust jacket is one of the very early dust jackets with the ads on the reverse side.

Both the front and back flaps have a message along the edge in red ink. On the front flap, the message reads, "LOOK ON THE REVERSE SIDE OF THIS JACKET." On the back flap, the message reads, "PRESERVE THIS WRAPPER FOR FUTURE REFERENCE." Anytime you see a photo of one of the jacket flaps and see a message at the edge in red ink, it is a very early dust jacket from the early 1930s that has the lists on the reverse side.

The "New" Dana Girls Books

Two "new" Dana Girls books are now for sale on various websites. I have seen them on at least three different websites, and I am sure that they are available on others as well. Two different people have asked me about these books, and they are also the subject of some discussion in the Judy Bolton group.

The "new" Dana Girls books are called The Secret at the Windmill Estate and The Mystery of the Cameo Curse. These are not new stories. They are actually Kay Tracey books that have been "rewritten" into Dana Girls books by someone. While names have been changed and passages have been partially rewritten, the "new" Dana Girls books have heavily plagiarized the two Kay Tracey books.

Here is the beginning of the Kay Tracey book, The Secret at the Windmill:

Three high school girls, their arms loaded with textbooks, raced across the Carmont station platform, swinging aboard the train just as it started to move.

"One day we'll be a second too late," Betty Worth declared, brushing a wisp of blond hair from her eyes. "Kay Tracey, you're a regular sprinter when it comes to catching trains at the last moment!"

"I don't like to stand around at a station platform when I can find more interesting things to do," Kay responded, her brown eyes twinkling. "Besides, foot racing is good for the figure."

"If we keep pace with you we'll be skeletons before the school term ends," Wilma drawled. "Look at me already."

Here is the opening of the "new" Dana Girls book, The Secret at Windmill Estate:

Two school girls raced across the Penfield station platform, swinging aboard the train just as it started to move. The train slowly left the station in the late afternoon sunshine.

"One day we'll be a second too late," Jean Dana declared, brushing a wisp of blond hair from her eyes. "Louise, you're a regular sprinter when it comes to catching trains at the last moment!"

"I don't like to stand around at a station platform when I can find more interesting things to do," Louise Dana answered her sister, her eyes twinkling. "Besides, foot racing is good for the figure."

"We'll be skeletons before the school term ends," Jean said. As the days grew longer and the temperature became warmer, she knew that Summer would soon be upon them.

The above passage is taken from the preview that appears on the link that I provided near the beginning of this post. I have not purchased these books, and I do not intend to do so. They sound interesting, but I do not find them interesting enough to want to pay nearly $20 for each of them. Perhaps if they were less than $10, I would at least consider it.

The copyright pages, which can be seen in the preview of the books, refer to the books as parodies. Parodies are protected under copyright laws, so by calling the books parodies, the author was able to get a publisher to accept them. By definition, a parody "imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule." First, I do not believe that these texts are intended to ridicule the original texts. Second and more importantly, these texts are much more than imitation. Large portions of these texts are identical to the original books. This is plagiarism.

Both the Dana Girls and Kay Tracey series were properties of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which was purchased by Simon and Schuster. I doubt that Simon and Schuster gave permission for these books to be published.

As to whether collectors should purchase these books, that is an individual decision. Some collectors have expressed positive opinions and will be purchasing them. Others, like me, will not be purchasing the books. Mainly, people need to be aware that these books are not completely new stories.

The Crossword Cipher Saga Continues...

This is just amazing. I bought this lot of books on eBay: Nancy Drew 10 hardcovers 1933 & up GREAT set!!! Item #220494603776 I only bought the lot because of the library binding of Whispering Statue, not that I really needed another library binding. The books didn't look to be in very good shape, in spite of the seller's comments. I just received the books, and they are what I expected—not in very good shape. Whenever I buy library bindings, they usually come with poor condition books, and that is what I expect regardless of what the seller states. As I pull Nancy Drew picture covers from packages, I always turn to the back cover to see what is the last title listed. I get to the rather trashed copy of Crossword Cipher and... it lists to Pine Hill on the back cover. The elusive first printing! Or is it? The book lists to Pine Hill on the back cover, which meets the points for the elusive 1967A-1 printing. However, we have a problem. The elusive first printing has no interior list of titles... then why on earth does mine have a list of titles? It is on the reverse side of the last page of text, which is page 177. The list of titles is ND #1-43 and DG #1-27. This matches the interior list for the third, fourth, and fifth printings. So I seem to have a hybrid between the first and one of three later printings. So what do I have? Do I have the elusive first printing? As far as I'm concerned, I have yet another interesting anomaly. I'm not convinced that it is the first printing. I still think that the "first printing" of Crossword Cipher is more of an anomaly, even though multiple examples exist. So if you own a Crossword Cipher listing to Pine Hill, does your book have a post-text list of titles? This gets stranger and stranger.

Warnings at Waverly Academy

The 21st Nancy Drew game, Warnings at Waverly Academy, was released this month by Her Interactive. This game is loosely based on the Nancy Drew book, The Curse of the Black Cat. Unlike the early Nancy Drew games, the more recent ones are just slightly based on the books, so it is possible to have read the book and not be able to guess who the villain is in the game.

This game was back to basics. I greatly enjoyed how for the first time in a number of games, the player is able to walk through and explore a building in first person. In most of the recent games, a large amount of the game play has been in third person, in which the player has to guide Nancy from above through some means.

The character interaction is much better than in the previous game, Ransom of the Seven Ships. In Seven Ships, the player is only able to talk to a couple of people so it is not hard to guess who the villain is. In this game, the player is able to speak to a number of characters, so it is not obvious.

As in previous games, the player has to play games with one of the characters in order to gain information. I found the two games to be much easier than the ones from Seven Ships. Seven Ships has this horrible coconut throw that is just about impossible to win. I hated it. This game has scram and air hockey, and I was able to win both on just the second try. My first try yielded me the necessary information on how to play each game, so on the second try I was able to beat both of them.

I cheated with online spoilers a few times, but if I had wished to spend the extra time, I could have completed all tasks without help. This game was easier than most of the recent Nancy Drew games. It would probably be a good one for someone to try who has never played a Nancy Drew game.

For people who like the play the game to learn the title of the next game, please stop reading here if you do not want to know the title or subject of the next game that is to be released next year. Remember, you've been warned to quit reading NOW...
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SPOILER ALERT
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The next game is called Trail of the Twister and is set in Oklahoma. Ugh... I was a bit dismayed since that means that the game is based on The Mystery in Tornado Alley, which is set in my home state of Oklahoma and is one of my least favorite Nancy Drew books. I absolutely hate that book...

Why do I hate it? First, it is written very badly. It makes little sense and the plot has a thousand holes. It is stupid. I haven't read it since I read it years ago, and I hardly want to put myself through a bad experience in order to refresh my memory of the specifics. I will, however, mention the part of the book that I object to the most. I found an old post of mine to the Nancy Drew Sleuths group in which I answered the question of whether I felt that Nancy Drew had ever had a "jump the shark" moment.

Once again, be forewarned of spoiler information concerning a dreadful book that you probably don't want to read anyway...

SPOILER

I could mention several, but I would say the main one would be in Tornado Alley when Nancy is sucked into an F5 tornado while in a car, stays conscious while banging around in the car, decides to get out of the car, and is set gently on the ground uninjured and unhit by debris. It is not only stupid and unbelievable, but totally irresponsible of the author to write such utter garbage. I live in Central Oklahoma and was nearly hit (missed by half a mile) by the F5 Oklahoma City tornado of May 3, 1999. I have a healthy respect of tornadoes and what they can do.

I will elaborate a little bit. One cannot survive an F5 tornado without taking cover. The F5 tornado of May 3, 1999 killed more than 40 people. Nearly everyone took cover, which is why so few people were killed by a huge tornado with winds of 318 mph, and some of the people were killed in their homes while taking cover in closets or bathrooms. Many of the people who took cover under highway overpasses had hideous injuries such as losing an ear. It was not pretty.

I drove by a huge pile of mangled cars each day for months after the tornado while on the way to work. Those cars were twisted and torn like they had been in a horrific accident at a high rate of speed. There is no way that someone could have been in one of those cars and survived that kind of tornado, let alone been in full control of oneself and able to get out of the car (!) and land on the ground uninjured. Not only that, but Nancy's friends conveniently arrive right after the tornado passes, and they never check on the other person who was in the car with Nancy. They just leave assuming he is dead (!). If Nancy lived through it, then why couldn't he have lived? It turned out he was dead, but still... (!)

Just thinking about it brings back horrible memories of that book. I shudder.

The good news is that surely Her Interactive is changing up the story significantly like they have other recent games. I hope... I have this lingering worry that Her Interactive will have Nancy sucked into a tornado, etc. Ugh!

Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #33

SIGN OF THE TWISTED CANDLES - KEENE NANCY DREW MYSTERY Item #380162102798

This is the seller's picture:

Question: Hi there! I'm interested in purchasing this book. I was wondering if you could describe for me the endpapers inside the front cover - what the design looks like and what color it's printed in.

Answer: The endpapers are orange silhouettes on white. ONe side shows three girls and the other side shows Nancy with a magnifying glass following a trail with a house in the background. Thanks for your interest. Good luck!

This is another example of an unnecessary question. Notice the lower right corner of the book where the dust jacket is turned back. We can see that the dust jacket has the print on the reverse side, which means that the jacket is from the early 1930s. Anyone who has visited my Nancy Drew formats page knows that Twisted Candles was never printed in the blank endpapers format (only volumes 1-7 were). Since the jacket is from the early 1930s, the book must have orange silhouette endpapers. Notice that the book is thick and that a small amount of the orange writing can be seen on the cover. These are other clues.

More on Best Match

In my last post, I mentioned discrepancies in eBay's "best match" search. Today I was able to check the "best match" standing of a couple of listings from a seller who has had a low recent sell-through rate. Both listings were for collectible vintage Nancy Drew books, and both listings were fixed-price.

One of the listings was the #1 item on the "ending soonest" search and was set to close three minutes later. I quickly ran a "best match" search. I was unable to find the item in the top 1,000 results in "best match" before I ran out of time.

I next chose another listing from the same seller which was set to close 20 minutes later. This gave me a bit more time. This item had a "best match" ranking of between 2,200 and 2,400. How would anyone find it with "best match" search?

I wondered whether 30-day fixed-price listings fall down towards the bottom of the "best match" search results when they get closer to completion. I tried to test my theory, but I was not able to find a listing from the same seller which was new. I did find one that was listed four days ago. This listing had a "best match" rank of between 1,600 and 1,800, which was bad but better than the items that were close to completion.

It is now no mystery to me why this seller has had low sales.

I next checked a fixed-price listing from another seller and found that a listing that closes tomorrow has a ranking of approximately 2,200 in "best match" search. This was a different seller but the same result. Interesting...

My four auctions close in two days. I decided to go ahead and look for them in the "best match" search results. I was quite surprised to find that all four listings were ranked at about 300 in the "best match" search. I feel that this is quite high for listings that still have two days to go, and especially for someone like me who was not wanted by eBay one year ago. I assumed that eBay favored sellers who use eBay more. Since I no longer sell much on eBay, I thought my listings would be buried, but this is not the case. This proves that eBay is favoring auctions over fixed-price listings in search, just as they have stated.

The ranking of my items cannot be because of anything I have done. I have only sold two items in the last two months, so I do not have previous sales to give me a boost. I am not a top-rated seller. Since these lots contain multiple books, I used the shipping calculator to set my shipping at above $4.00. It does not look like I am getting penalized for having higher shipping, which I sort of expected. The placement of the listings has to be because of the auction format.

Personally, I would be peeved if I were listing a bunch of fixed-price listings and eBay were hiding them from everyone. No wonder so many of them are not selling.

Search Discrepancies on eBay

Those of you who still sell on eBay should not take offense when I mention your sales. I do not mention names, and I am not implying that you have done anything wrong. On the contrary, I am indignant that eBay is hiding your items in search. The "best-match" search truly is hiding items—at least some of them.

I ran a search last night for "Nancy Drew" under "best match" and "ending soonest." I did not have the luxury of checking the results for any seller whose sales are down, since I needed for those sellers to have listings about to close, but I did find a result for someone who is well-known in the series book collecting community.

This person's book was #4 on the "ending soonest" search. It closed approximately one hour after I ran my search. This seller is not top-rated. I checked the results for "best match" and was unable to locate the book in the first 1,400 results (!). I figured that I had proved my point by that time, so I did not check further. I used the browser "find" feature on a word from the title of the listing as I searched each page of results to make certain that I did not miss it. There is no way that a buyer would have found that particular book in "best match." By the way, it was a blue tweed Nancy Drew book with dust jacket, so it was definitely a book that was of interest to collectors.

I also noticed that the missing item was one that had "Buy It Now or Best Offer" enabled. At the time that I ran this particular search, I noticed that the auction listings were receiving prominent placement in "best match" while the ones with Buy It Now were either missing or way down the page.

I checked the search results again this afternoon, and I noticed that the Buy It Now listings were receiving about the same placement as the auction listings. The "best match" results seem to change from day to day. It is very odd. If I were selling all of my books on eBay, I would be very concerned about this. The reason why I am checking into it is because people have mentioned the discrepancies on various message boards, and I wanted to see for myself if their statements are true. Apparently they are.

Tonight, I ran another search and compared the results for "ending soonest" and "best match." Once again, I was able to quickly isolate a book that is to close in around 12 hours and is not showing in "best match." This time, I went through every page of results. I was unable to find the book in any of the 18 pages of results, or 3,514 items. That book is not showing in "best match" at all. Why?

I noticed that the book is from the same seller as the first book I mentioned from last night. I also noticed that the book is a "Buy It Now or Best Offer" item. Odd... Out of curiosity, I checked to see if that seller had any other copies of that Nancy Drew volume available. The seller had two others. The other two books were showing on page 18 of 18 under "best match" and were ranked at around 3,400 out of the 3,514 items. This is not good.

These books are all vintage, collectible Nancy Drew books that are of interest to collectors. They are buried in "best match" while dozens, maybe hundreds, of near worthless flashlight editions are ranked higher. "Best match" indeed...

I am amazed that this particular seller who has a long track record and good sales has books that eBay is hiding in "best match." I thought eBay liked sellers who sell a lot, so why is eBay hiding some of this seller's items?

I do actually have four bulk lots of Nancy Drew books on eBay right now. They are books that I do not care to sell on Bonanzle. The books are all in auctions with no Buy It Now. As they reach the final day, I'm going to be checking to see what the placement is in "best match" and "ending soonest." I suggest other sellers do the same with their listings as the listings near the closing time.
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In addition to the "best match" problems, eBay is messing around with the search results again. The store results have been placed back into the core search results for some lucky users like me. This was done in 2006 and resulted in auctions losing in popularity. When eBay realized the mistake, the store results were removed from core, but the damage had been done. Since 2006, auctions have been on a steady decline. For some reason, eBay has decided to place store results back in core in a test run. This means that our search results are cluttered with store items, and it is very hard to find anything for the larger searches. While the test search may positively affect eBay stores, it will negatively affect people who have paid higher fees for auctions and 30-day fixed price listings.

If you remove all of your eBay cookies, you may be able to get out of the test search. I tried it and was able to see the normal search results again. I do not know how long this test is set to run, but it is making large searches like "Nancy Drew" very hard to navigate.