He Hath Not Eat Paperbacks, As It Were

Paperback editions have not really been my focus for the past few years, bloggers, however it’s time I started diverting my attention to them, starting with a proper inventory of what I have amassed.  So here we go:

Imprint 1

Not very pretty, is it?  A rag-bag of worn spines and dirty pages with several titles missing completely.  Almost all of these will require upgrading.  The photo illustrates the difficulties encountered by Three Investigators collectors who are trying to achieve a nice uniform display of spines.  Some have large bold titles, others small bold or not bold.  Some have “ARMADA BOOKS” in text while others have the Armada logo.  Some have the number stated others don’t and the later ones have the number after “HITCHCOCK”, sometimes after the title, sometimes at the foot of the spine.  A dog’s breakfast frankly.  Anyway it looks like I’m going to need a Terror Castle, a Skeleton Island, a Fiery Eye, a Talking Skull, a Laughing Shadow, a Nervous Lion and an Invisible Dog at the very least, before I take uniformity and the tatty condition of some of these volumes into account.  Some major work to be done here, so it’s off to eBay for me.


Imprint 2

This is a bit more like it.  I’ve got loads of these with at least as many copies again as doubles.  The condition of these is much better than imprint 1 with most being in VG or better.  This is actually what a complete set of these looks like as Whispering Mummy, Singing Serpent, Monster Mountain and Death Trap Mine were not issued in this format.

Imprint 3

A pretty poor showing for this imprint as well as several missing titles, some of these are ex-library books.  Almost none of imprints 1 and 2 were taken by libraries who preferred hardbacks, but since by the time imprint 3 was available, alas hardbacks were no longer in print so these had to do.  From this set, I’m missing Terror Castle, Green Ghost, Fiery Eye, Silver Spider, Moaning Cave, Crooked Cat, Coughing Dragon, Shrinking House, Phantom Lake, Haunted Mirror, Invisible Dog, and Death Trap Mine.  Fuck sake that’s 12.

Imprint 4

This is a fairly pathetic collection, bloggers.  I have only 11 of the 29 available in this format.  Missing are: books 2 through to 15, Dead Man’s Riddle, Invisible Dog, Deadly Double and Two Toed Pigeon.  I think some of the earlier titles in this set will be fairly difficult to find.

Imprint 5

It just gets more and more desperate, bloggers as I survey my complete 5^th imprint collection, thus:

In fact there are 30 books in this set, so a quick calculation means that I’ve got 28 of them to go...

Paperback Omnibuses

My collection is again somewhat lacking in this department.  

I am short a ridiculous 16 books.

Crimebusters

This is more like it:

A full set in generally excellent condition!

Crimebusters Omnibuses

Once again a full set:  

These are hugely common.

So by my calculation, I need 7 imprint 1, 12 imprint 3, 18 imprint 4, 28 imprint 5 and 18 omnibuses giving a total of 83 books to go.  The game is afoot!