eBay Auction Prices - Outdoor Girls, Blythe Girls

I decided to take note of some of the recent eBay auction prices for the Outdoor Girls and Blythe Girls books. There has been some very competitive bidding recently for the Blythe Girls books.

Blythe Girls:

Helen, Margy, and Rose w/DJ, $9.99 (Buy It Now), $88.76 (auction)
Margy's Queer Inheritance w/DJ, $77.76
Rose's Great Problem w/DJ, $40.88, w/DJ $4.99
Helen's Strange Boarder w/DJ, $21.50
Three on a Vacation w/DJ $7.45, w/DJ $21.18
Margy's Secret Mission w/DJ, $90.89
Rose's Odd Discovery w/DJ $97.89
Snowbound in Camp w/DJ, $39.88
Margy's Mysterious Visitor w/DJ $39.99 (Buy It Now)
Rose's Hidden Talent w/DJ, $191.38
Helen's Wonderful Mistake w/DJ, $84.00

The prices realized for different series books range from low to high, depending upon how many people are interested at a particular time. Consequently, some of the books sell for well below value, since many sellers choose to start the books low and sometimes only one person is interested in buying a particular book. This is why a few of the Blythe Girls books sold for fairly low prices as compared to the other books. It is also not a good idea to use Buy It Now when selling a book, unless one is very certain of the value. Compare the Buy It Now price to the completed auction price for the first title in the Blythe Girls series.

Outdoor Girls:

Outdoor Girls on Pine Island w/DJ, $34.99
Outdoor Girls in Florida w/DJ, $16.07
Outdoor Girls in Army Service w/DJ, $36.55, $20.50
Outdoor Girls Around the Campfire w/DJ (Duotone), $57.99
Outdoor Girls at Foaming Falls w/DJ, $10.49
Outdoor Girls at Spring Hill Farm w/DJ, $37.50
Outdoor Girls on a Canoe Trip w/DJ, $29.88
Outdoor Girls at New Moon Ranch w/DJ, $8.99
Outdoor Girls in Desert Valley w/DJ, $325.00

I believe it has been quite a few months since a dust-jacketed copy of Desert Valley has sold, so several people very much wanted that book.

Girl Scouts Mystery Series, The Mysterious Camper w/DJ, $87.99
Girl Scouts Mystery Series, Trail of the Gypsy Eight, no DJ, $24.83
Girl Scouts Mystery Series, The Secret of Halliday House; w/DJ $93.00; no DJ $18.50

The Ruth Fielding Series

I consider Ruth Fielding and Her Double to be the hardest to find book in the Ruth Fielding series, and it is the one that I finally acquired this week. I had waited for months for a less expensive one to come up for sale. The ones that have been available online for months are far higher in price than I care to pay. Do a search at www.abebooks.com to see what I mean about the prices for this title. I finally bought one within the price range that is acceptable to me.

I am now one volume short of having a complete set of the Ruth Fielding series in dust jacket. Ruth Fielding in Talking Pictures is the last title I need. There are several copies available online, and they are much more reasonable than the ones of Ruth Fielding and Her Double. It is just a matter of deciding which to buy or whether to continue to wait for either a better condition or less expensive one to come up for sale. I may end up buying one of the available copies, simply to end my quest of Ruth Fielding books.

In around two weeks, I am finally going to have time to read again. I plan to finish reading the Susan Sand series. After Susan Sand, I will read Ruth Fielding, assuming that I have a complete set by that time. I always wait for a complete set before I begin reading any of the books in a series. I am hoping that the Ruth Fielding series will prove to be good. It is hard to judge a series without detailed information available online. I have read comments over the years that have stated that the Ruth Fielding series is good; however, I have never read specific enough of comments to give me a compelling reason to want to read the series.

I don't like all girls' series books. The Dorothy Dixon series is one example. I read the first book and part of the second, and the books bored me, so I never finished the second book. Someday I will try again. In spite of my lukewarm reaction to the Dorothy Dixon series, I do want to read Dorothy Dixon and the Double Cousin someday. One of the Judy Bolton books, The Secret of the Musical Tree, has the same plot as Dorothy Dixon and the Double Cousin.

My point is that I could read Ruth Fielding and be bored. I hope this is not the case as it has taken me more than a year to get this close to a complete set. I feel like the series must be good; it would not have stayed in print for 30 titles if it were a weak series. The 30 title duration of the series and the good, although vague, comments from various people about the series are the reasons why I chose to build a set. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

New Grosset and Dunlap Nancy Drew Collectibles

Today I visited a few bookstores and purchased some of the new collectibles that have been published in advance of the upcoming Nancy Drew Warner Brothers movie.  The best items are the ones put out by Grosset and Dunlap, and I am quite impressed with the effort that Grosset and Dunlap has put into these new items.

By far the best one is the book The Lost Files of Nancy Drew.  Grosset and Dunlap has used some of its old artwork and created a scrapbook about Nancy Drew's adventures during the original 56 Nancy Drew mysteries.   It is set up like it is Nancy Drew's very own scrapbook.  It is the best Nancy Drew item published by Grosset and Dunlap in several decades.

The book opens with this message: Whenever Nancy Drew closed the book on a mystery, she always recorded her adventure in her journal.  For many years it was believed that none of these firsthand accounts existed, but we've unearthed several from some of Nancy's most exciting mysteries.  You are free to read them, but be careful - make sure no one's looking over your shoulder.  The last thing Nancy would want is for any criminals or crooks to learn all her secrets!

The book is full of comments that read as though written by Nancy Drew herself.  The book contains Nancy Drew's mementos from her past mysteries, and many items are featured in the book as three-dimensional items that can be pulled up from the pages, such as Josiah Crowley's will, Nancy's Sleuthing Supply List, Nancy's Ski Pass from The Mystery at Ski Jump, Nancy's passport, and other neat surprises.  Grosset and Dunlap put an amazing amount of time and effort into producing this excellent scrapbook.

Grosset and Dunlap has also created an item called the Nancy Drew Pocketbook Mysteries.  This neat item is like a pocketbook and contains the first two Nancy Drew Mystery Stories in the current Grosset and Dunlap flashlight editions.  The pocketbook has handles and the side features the original Tandy art to the first Nancy Drew mystery, The Secret of the Old Clock.  The part I love the most is the "lining" of the pocketbook.  The lining is made of heavy paper stock and is the old blue multipic endpapers that Grosset and Dunlap used in its Nancy Drew books during the 1950s and 1960s.   The Nancy Drew Pocketbook Mysteries is a neat collectible item!  

The third item put out by Grosset and Dunlap is the new updated edition of the Nancy Drew Sleuth Book.  The Nancy Drew Sleuth Book has been out of print since the last 1970s and is quite scarce.  The cover of the new book is very similar to the old edition, but the silhouette has been changed back to a 1930s-style Nancy Drew rather than the 1970s-style silhouette that was on the 1970s edition.  Best of all, the new book has a matte finish, unlike the rest of Grosset and Dunlap's current Nancy Drew books, the ubiquitous flashlight editions we love so much.  In fact, I don't even own a set of the flashlight editions as I dislike them so much.  But this new Sleuth book is a must-have!

A Busy Time of Year

Spring is a busy time of year for me, and this year I have sufficient distractions to keep me from reading as much as I usually do. Another core interest I have is everything about the fictional hero, Zorro, and a Zorro telenovela airs five nights per week on Telemundo until the middle of summer. Currently, the shows are 90 minutes long and will probably return to 60 minutes long in a week. Needless to say, the telenovela is taking up most all of the time in which I normally read. I have started to read the Susan Sand series, but it is going very slowly due to lack of time. It seems that I read a chapter during one sitting around a couple of times per week. That's it. Unless I speed it up a lot, it will be awhile before I get through the series. I am near the end of the second book at this time. My current feeling is that the Susan Sand series is like a parody of Nancy Drew. I have acquired some nice new foreign and library editions as well as two Riddle Club dust jackets that I did not previously have and upgraded a third Riddle Club dust jacket. As time and energy allows, I will place scans on my site. Next week, I do get a week off of work, so I expect that I will get some of the scans added at that time. I may even manage to read most of the Susan Sand books.

The Lost City of the Aztecs by J. A. Lath

I just finished reading The Lost City of the Aztecs by J. A. Lath. I purchased this book solely because I thought that the dust jacket was pretty. I really didn't know if I would like the book.

I do not tend to like boys' series books as much as girls' series books, because many of the ones that I have read tend to have too many fistfights and other things that don't interest me much. This book turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Within the first few pages, I knew I was in for a treat. This is the best book that I have read in quite some time. It is highly suspenseful, and I could hardly put the book down until I finished it.

In this book, a boy named Ralph finds a cipher and a message hidden in the binding of a book about the Aztecs of Mexico. Ralph's friend, Dick, decodes the cipher, which gives directions to a lost Aztec city that is located in the crater of a dormant volcano somewhere near the Arizona border with Mexico. The boys decide to try to find the lost city and are accompanied by two friends. I would love to mention something about what happens when the boys reach their destination, which is only halfway through the book, but I feel like this would spoil too much. All that I will say is that what they find is fantastic, and the second half of the book is extremely suspenseful reading.

I highly recommend this book. It is a scarce book, but copies of it can be found reasonably at
www.abebooks.com.

I am now going to read the one other book that J. A. Lath wrote, The Cortez Emerald Mystery. It features the same characters, and I am eagerly anticipating what it might contain.

More on the Riddle Club Series

I finished the Riddle Club section yesterday, proofread it again today, and placed it on the site a short while ago. I try to place a humorous or somehow important quote at the top of each new section. I particularly like the one I have used for the Riddle Club section:

"I read in a book that people with sense always watch things. When they are taking a walk, they see the trees and the plants. When they are out driving they notice the landmarks. I like advertisements—I always watch them. And when our car tipped to let the other go by, I looked right at that advertisement for orange marmalade and I remembered it. So when Polly said she dropped her pin I knew she must have dropped it there."

"My goodness, you read a lot of books, don't you, Artie?" Jess said, with manifest respect.

" 'Improving' ones," Artie said modestly.

"Huh, what about the story books you keep under your bed?" Fred suggested. "Nothing very 'improving' about Indians and pirates, that I ever heard of."

"That's because you don't read 'em," announced Artie. "Ward and I have an invention most made now—a new kind of arrow. Any book is 'improving' that teaches you something."

The quote is from The Riddle Club at Sunrise Beach. The reason I like this quote so much is that Fred comments that the storybooks that Artie reads are not very "improving." The type of books that Fred refers to are books like the Riddle Club books and all of the other Stratemeyer Syndicate books. Artie has a good answer when he states that "any book is 'improving' that teaches you something."

I feel like this statement takes aim at all of the people during the early 1900s who blasted the Stratemeyer Syndicate books as poorly-written, sensational books that would dumb down children. It is certainly true that even formula-driven series books can teach children new things, and even I as an adult have learned new things from these vintage books. I learned lots of new riddles while reading the Riddle Club books!

The Riddle Club Series

I will be adding the Riddle Club section to my site soon, either tomorrow or later this week. I have just begun to read the last book in the series.

While I thought that the Riddle Club books might be worth collecting, I have to say that they have been a pleasant surprise and better than I expected. I first noticed the series a couple years ago as I tried to find the true 1st printing of Nancy Drew #6, The Secret of Red Gate Farm. The Riddle Club series is the series listed on the 2nd page of post-text ads in the very first printing of Red Gate Farm. This fact drew my attention to the series. The ad states:

Here is an ingenious a series of books for little folks as ever appeared since "Alice in Wonderland." The idea of the Riddle Books is this, three girls and three boys decide to form a riddle club. Each book is full of the adventures of these youngsters, but as an added attraction each book is filled with a lot of the best riddles you ever heard.

The idea of club members telling each other riddles is intriguing. There are many, many riddles in each book. Some of them were easy for me, while others were difficult. A child could have a lot of fun reading these books and trying to solve the riddles before the answers are given. Each time a riddle is asked, the club members take turns guessing and almost always get into discussions, sometimes heated, about what the answer could be.

I had trouble getting into the first book, for several reasons. Part of it was just me and that I was very busy at work and wasn't sure which series I wanted to read next (see my first post in this blog). The other reason is that I had trouble keeping all six characters straight. I gave up on that issue and forged my way through the book. By the second book, I began to see several of the characters as different from the others. I do believe that the author did a better job of exploring the characters' personalities as the series progressed. By the fifth book, Polly, Artie, Ward, Fred, and Margy were all distinctly different characters in my mind. Jess was the only one that didn't stand out. As I begin volume 6, Jess still doesn't stand out, but that's okay.

The series has a lot of humor in it, more than many other series do. I feel that humor is an important part of any series book. I find that the ones that I enjoy more do have more humor in them than the ones that I enjoy less. Book 5 is hilarious. I laughed out loud quite a few times. At one point I laughed uncontrollably. I won't try to describe the scene, but the antics of Ward (the obligatory fat friend) and of Artie (the bookworm who continually recites everything he has learned from books) are priceless.

So look for the Riddle Club section shortly . . .

Sweet Valley High Series Section Now Up

The Sweet Valley High series is the series I alluded to in my previous post. I was an avid reader of SVH from 1983 to around 1986 or so, and I have strong nostalgic feelings about the series. I prepared the SVH section a few weeks ago and put the finishing touches on it today. It is now listed on the main page of my site and can be found at 

http://www.series-books.com/svh/svh.html

 I have only covered the first 35 books in the series, because these are the only ones that I care about.