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Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 00:52
by sixret
I agree. The dj is too tatty with so many chips at the front top.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 00:58
by sixret
Image

Are you ok with this dj, Rob? The price is £25(with book)

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 01:09
by sixret
Image

A better copy. The price is £45(with book).

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 01:14
by Rob Houghton
The second one is more like it - but not the price! ;-) The Kilimooin one had a really good wrapper and was much cheaper as you know - but thank you for looking! :D

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 01:26
by IceMaiden
Rob Houghton wrote: Not sure what 'list' Sixret meant - but you can have emails from WorldofRareBooks. Not sure how I opted for this - take a look on their eBay page.

I will have a look at that, emails stating what books they have in would be very useful as they sell a lot of good ones in not to bad condition.
sixret wrote:Those two sentences were separated.

I bought Secret Island with dj from an independent seller's list. I was just lucky that there was Secret Island with dj being listed in the list.


And I have seen Spiggy Holes with dj listed in World of Rare Books store. I wanted to let Rob know since he haven't got Spiggy Holes with dj in his collection yet.

Hope this explain.
I'm with you now, I thought you'd got your list from the seller behind World of Rare Books not a completely different place! Secret Island with a dj is expensive, I've only seen one and it's £100. It doesn't appear much even without a dj.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 01:52
by sixret
I bought it for less than half of £100.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 10:56
by Tony Summerfield
It does worry me that some of you are prepared to pay silly prices for tatty books, as it has a knock on affect as these prices become the benchmark for all future copies. To ask £120 for that copy of At Seaside Cottage was daylight robbery and they got £137 for a book that in nice condition shouldn't cost more than £20 - £30. This copy said that the internal pages had come away from the spine - hardly surprising as the spine was missing as well!! This book is no rarer than any of the other Brockhampton Picture books, whilst The Yellow Fairy Book which sold for less money is extremely scarce in a dustwrapper and was worth the price that the book went for - I even considered it myself, but I wouldn't have paid more than £100 for it.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 12:55
by Courtenay
Yeah, you tell 'em, Tony. :wink: Seriously, though — I'm one of those who would like to own reasonable copies of some of these older books, but there's no way I can justify the cost if even the tattier ones are driven up to exorbitant prices, way beyond what they're genuinely worth. It saddens me that the same books my mum used to pick up for 20c in an op shop (Australian for a charity shop) only 20 years ago — if only I'd had any interest in collecting them myself back then! — are now being flogged off at insanely high prices, largely because there are buyers willing to pay those amounts and the sellers know it. :(

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 13:59
by Rob Houghton
So - here's a photo of the book I just bought off eBay - The Secret of Killimooin.

This is about as tatty as I would ever go with a dust jacket - but for £10.65 and free postage, I thought 'why not?' :-)


Image

I don't generally buy books with wrappers as tatty as this - but with the Secret series, you have to make do usually, especially if you don't want to pay the earth!

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 14:51
by sixret
Well done! The dj can be repaired easily.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 15:05
by IceMaiden
Tony Summerfield wrote:It does worry me that some of you are prepared to pay silly prices for tatty books, as it has a knock on affect as these prices become the benchmark for all future copies. To ask £120 for that copy of At Seaside Cottage was daylight robbery and they got £137 for a book that in nice condition shouldn't cost more than £20 - £30. This copy said that the internal pages had come away from the spine - hardly surprising as the spine was missing as well!! This book is no rarer than any of the other Brockhampton Picture books, whilst The Yellow Fairy Book which sold for less money is extremely scarce in a dustwrapper and was worth the price that the book went for - I even considered it myself, but I wouldn't have paid more than £100 for it.
Personally, I think something is generally worth what someone wants to pay for it. It is incredibly difficult to find At Seaside Cottage, I have looked every day for months for a copy to no avail so to me it was worth the price. Considering the one copy I did manage to find last autumn went for £286, which I only lost as I didn't have the money at the time, I think this one was extremely cheap in comparison, I was fully expecting to pay a lot more for it than that, and would have done as I've had such a job to find a copy. It's not that bad condition wise, it's all bound and intact still, handled carefully it will be fine.

Maybe books shouldnt be fetching these prices but as they do the only way to get them if you want them is to pay it, and as I get so much enjoyment from them I consider it money well spent. Once a book is bought if it's looked after it's there for life, it's not going to stop working in a few years, go out of date or need upgrading, it's going to be just as readable years after that one off payment is long done and forgotten.

My books are my hobby and like most people I'm always prepared to pay for what I enjoy, paying £20/30/40 for a book, or £100 + for a long searched for one is to me no different to a golfer paying their club membership fee, a model railway enthusiast building up a very expensive layout in the loft or an equestrian fan travelling to various shows every weekend. That's how I see it anyway, I suppose it comes down to individual people's limits as what's a fair price to one might be a rip off to another but a bargain to someone else.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 15:18
by sixret
Well done, Ice Maiden! I tell you Enid Blyton's magazines have so much to offer and they are very enjoyable.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 18:03
by Wolfgang
Well, two more books arrived today, though with quite some delay...

Le mystére des enveloppes mauves Hachette idéal 1973 The mystery of the spiteful letters
Deux jumelles en pension Hachette idéal 1976 The twins at St Clare's

So three more books of the mystery series to go. I wonder when the last book of the St Clare's series will arrive, I paid for it 4 weeks ago...

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 18:35
by John Pickup
I've been to a small book fair at Lincoln today and bought a 1956 1st edition Five On A Secret Trail in fine condition with a superb wrapper, it doesn't look as if it's been read, and a 1949 2nd impression of The Put-Em-Rights also with an excellent wraparound wrapper by Barbara Freeman. The seller wanted £40 for both, I offered £30 and finally settled for £32.
She also had a copy of Secret Of Moon Castle with wrapper for £35 but unfortunately about half an inch was missing from the top of the spine so I didn't bother. I think it was a 4th or 5th impression.

Re: What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

Posted: 20 May 2017, 18:42
by Rob Houghton
That's a great buy, John - Secret Trail is difficult to find in a first edition for some reason. :-)