A word about my previous collection.

This will actually be the fourth Three investigators collection I have amassed. The first consisted of the books I bought myself back in the 1970s when I was a lad and they were my favourite books. I no longer have any of these, but as far as I can remember, I had the following:

Large Hardback:
Stuttering Parrot (I got this as a School Prize)
Coughing Dragon
Nervous Lion
Phantom Lake
Headless Horse (I remember buying this in a newsagents shop in Girvan. It had a dustjacket and at the time I found it absolutely stunning.).

Small Hardback:
Moaning Cave
Talking Skull
Laughing Shadow
Singing Serpent

Paperback (all 1st editions):
Terror Castle
Whispering Mummy
Vanishing Treasure
Fiery Eye
Screaming Clock
Crooked Cat
Flaming Footprints
Shrinking House
Monster Mountain

I pretty much stopped buying them at this point, stung by criticism from my Granda who told me I was too old to be reading them. This was after I had bought the Headless Horse hardback as mentioned above, and it was the last book I bought. Mind you what the fuck did he know? If I was too old when I was 13, what am I now? The last paperback I bought was Monster Mountain the previous year, 1977.

Looking at this collection, it was actually not bad, with the vast majority of the first 20 titles represented. I remember reading Green Ghost and Silver Spider as books I had borrowed or otherwise got hold of. Anyway I stopped reading them even before I stopped buying them, as it was several years before I got around to reading Monster Mountain.

I gave all of these books away to a charity jumble sale. Was I mad, I hear you ask? Well, possibly. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.

A few years later (when I was 18), I bought about half a dozen hardbacks in a library sale. I really can’t remember much about what titles were included, but they were mostly small hardbacks. I’ve no idea what happened to these , I assume they just got chucked out during one of my many house movings.

Around 1992, I made the decision to build a collection of Three Investigators, my interest having been piqued by the sight of a 2nd paperback Deadly Double in a charity shop. Over the next decade, I built a very impressive collection, including all large hardbacks (apart from Screaming Clock), all small hardbacks and every edition of every paperback imprint. These books were all got the hard way, i.e. in charity shops, car boot sales, second hand bookshops, ads in local papers etc. This collection was put together in the days before eBay, at least I didn’t use eBay to buy any of them. I did use eBay, however, to put together my US editions collection – that is another story.

About five years ago, I sold every one of them. Some of them made a pretty penny (I remember £75 for my minty Phantom Lake with DJ). But now it’s time to get them all back. Where will I start?