Mason & Dixon 1st ed. hardbacks...

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:00:43 -0700 (PDT)
>From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Mason & Dixon 1st ed. hardbacks...
>
>....are plentiful, especially remaindered copies that
>have been marked as such, but...I talked with a book
>collector and seller today who told me he's holding
>onto a dozen pristine M&D 1st editions, he figures
>they will be worth plenty in another decade or so when
>most of the rest have faded away.
>

I believe he has to wait more than a decade. The prices will certainly 
increase, but not by very much: the first printing of Mason & Dixon ran to 
175,000 copies, and at the time of its publication collectors were already 
very much aware of Pynchon as a collectible author. This means that a lot of 
these 175,000 in all likelihood ended up on collectors' shelves, where 
they've sat ever since in pristine condition - I bought two copies of the 
first edition back in 1997: One for reading and one for - well, being 
pristine. Like with Hector Zuniga's shoes in Vineland: touch it at your own 
peril!

First editions of Vineland (first printing: 125,000 copies) are still dirt 
cheap, and rightly so: they are still so abundant in fine condition that any 
price higher than 50$ is sheer robbery.

Prices on Vineland and M&D may spike a bit upon the publication of AtD, but 
I suspect they will soon get back to a natural level.

On the other hand, the collector with the dozen M&Ds may do what Uncle 
Scrooge did with a certain coin back in an old Carl Barks story: Buy up all 
175,000 copies and dump 174,999 of them in the sea.

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