Mason & Dixon 1st ed. hardbacks...

[pynchonoid]

OK, make it 20 years.  But I suspect values will
increase sooner than that - it's already not easy to
find *As New* (not remaindered) copies of Mason &
Dixon and Slow Learner. 


--- Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:

> >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.


No need to do that.  Most of those copies are already
pretty beat up and would never command collector
prices .  I'm keeping my As New copies out of the
light, shelved upright, with dust cover jackets, like
the rest of the books I treasure.  They'll be worth
handing over to a grandchild, if I'm so lucky, one of
these days.

Likewise with Vineland, I expect an As New copy will
be valuable one of these days.  





 
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