Faithful Friends are Hardbacks to Find

Let’s start with a look at the, quite magnificent if I may say so, large hardback set.  Even if you have followed this blog form the beginning, many of these will be new to you as upgrades, so bear with me.

Terror Castle

I’ve cleaned up the cover a bit since you last saw this; now displays quite well.  The only real issues are a small nick to bottom front board and a small dent in the middle of the back cover.  I’d only be upgrading this for an exceptional copy.

  
Stuttering Parrot

A really nice copy of this 47 year old book.  A wee bit of foxing to top edge, but really as good a copy as you could expect.

Whispering Mummy

A tiny bit of foxing to top edge and some minor fading to text and colour block of spine.  Previous owner’s name on inside page.  Amanda Lithing? Utting?  Can anyone else make this surname out?  Amanda if you’re there, I’d love to hear from you.

Green Ghost

Some minor “shelf wear”, but internally this one is a doozy.  Very clean pages and it looks frankly unread.

Vanishing Treasure

Some minor fading to the spine, but this is another one that appears unread. 

Skeleton Island

I remember raving about this one when I bought it a couple of years ago.  Simply stunning for a book printed in 1968.

Fiery Eye

Here’s another belter.  This copy came from Abbey Books in Paisley sometime last year.  Clean, unfaded and tight.

Silver Spider

Another fantastic copy that has almost certainly never been read.  Hard to believe this was made in 1969.

Screaming Clock

Some very light shelf wear at edge of spine, otherwise this is the best book so far.  Brilliant white pages and very tight binding.  Awesome. 

Moaning Cave

Mmmm... nice.  This is the copy I got years ago now at the start of this collection in a big box of eBay books.

Talking Skull

Wow, the pages of this fisrt edition, 1970 copy are pearly white.  The only issue with it is the scraping evident on the front cover where a prvious owner has removed the gold Collins price sticker.  An upgrade for this book would have to be pretty much brand new.

Laughing Shadow

A teeny bit of reading wear to the spine, but really an excellent copy.

Crooked Cat

Slight rubs and knocks to boards here and a curious stain to the top edges of some of the pages, looks like a drop of liquid has fallen on it it one point.  Otherwise a great copy.

Coughing Dragon

Nice, nice nice.  This is a 1973 impression with cobweb end papers.  Some very minor fading to spine, otherwise a dillion.

Flaming Footprints

The first occurrence of Collins gold price sticker on this one.  This book is in absolutely stunning condition; clearly unread.  Unusually there is evidence of some fading to the cover, but as you can see, this is at the front edge rather than the spine, so we have to assume it has been stored backwards on a bookshelf possibly?  Anyway it’s a stonker of a copy.

Nervous Lion

Another great book.  Clearly unread and does not look its 42 years.

Singing Serpent

The best looking book in the collection so far.  Briliant white pages, price sticker attached, unread, tight binding.  This is the version with white endpapers.  Just Wow.  Honestly it could have been printed yesterday.

Shrinking House

This is the second best condition book i have, closely behind that large Singing Serpent.  Brilliant white pages, unread and with price sticker.  If only they could all be like this.

Phantom Lake

Apart from the tiniest creasing to top edge of the DJ, this book is as close to mint as you could get for a book of its age.  Check out the boards, have you ever seen a phantom Lake with such strong colours and crisp lines?

Monster Mountain

I’ve upgraded this one a few times, bloggers, and the end result is good but not great.  The book itself is good enough but the DJ has a crease along the top back edge.

Haunted Mirror

This one has been upgraded a few times as well, resulting in a fantastic book that really looks days old rather than 39 years.  It has clearly never been read and feels as though it has never been opened in anger.  A simply beautiful book.  It took me ages to get my hands on a decent Haunted Mirror that wasn’t an ex-library copy.  Looking at this,it was worth the wait.

Dead Man’s Riddle

The boards on this one are absolutely gorgeous.  Another unread copy that is only let down by that tear to the bottom of the front of the DJ.  Boo!

Invisible Dog

According to the back of the fep, this copy used to belong to Ian Brown, who must have been very careful when reading it as it is in exceptional condition.  Nectar nectar nectar.

Death Trap Mine

This is the first of the ex-lib books in my collection.  I’ve upgraded this one a fair few times as well, each ex-lib copy slightly better than the previous.  This is the best of the bunch; clean pages and minimal stamps etc.  Still an ex-lib copy though, so definitely room for improvement here.

Dancing Devil

The second of my three ex-lib copies.  Again, I have upgraded this book countless times, resulting as good an ex-lib copy as you could probably expect. 

Headless Horse

This book came form the West Kirby County Grammar School For Girls, which may explain why it’s in such remarkable condition for an ex-lib copy.  Nice colours to front cover but faded badly to spine.  The last copy I had of this had a less faded spine, but was much more tatty generally.  I was thrawn with which copy to keep and which to sell, but this one won out.

Magic Circle

This is Maxine Lawton’s old copy and by the looks of it she never got round to reading it.  She did, however, place it on a shelf that was hit with sunlight, as the spine is faded.  A pity actually, as otherwise the copy is in awesome condition.  I have had umpteen copies of this book, bloggers, for some reason it seems to be quite easy to find.  At one point I had three ex-lib copies in various states of disrepair.  They tend to fetch a nice price on eBay, mind you.

Deadly Double

I’ve had one or two of these as well, mostly ex-lib, but also that one I blogged about.  Considering how rare this title is and that they are mostly ex-lib copies that turn up, this is a cracker.  Clean, tight pages, unread, unclipped DJ.  No fading to spine.  I can’t imagine a better copy showing up any time soon.

So, what ones need upgrading out of this lot?  Well, aside from those obvious library copies, I would probably look for a Terror Castle with better boards, a Vanishing Treasure with a less faded spine, a Monster Mountain with perfect DJ, a similar Dead Man’s Riddle and maybe a Magic Circle with unfaded DJ.  Any offers you guys have would be gratefully received.

Here’s what they look like in my new Globe-Werniecke bookcase:

Now, what about those pesky small hardbacks?

A Year Passes...

It’s been a while since I updated this blog, fellow T3I fans, so it’s time to answer the question I keep getting asked... What happened next?

If you recall, when last we met, I had just completed the collection of UK hardbacks and had vowed to get the paperback collection up to the same standard.  Unfortunately that’s not exactly what happened.  You see, bloggers, I discovered something very interesting.  Bugger me, but collecting Hardback Three Investigators books is much more fun than collecting paperback editions.  And with the best will in the world I just couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm I had for the HB collection so the paperback collection ended up generally stagnant.  That’s not to say I stopped buying Three Investigators book s completely, in fact far from it.  What I have been doing for the past year or so is buying up all of the Collins dustjacketted editions I could find.  If they were an upgrade for me, that was fine, if not, on to eBay they went, sometimes for an awesome profit.  The result has been twofold; 1: I have upgraded many of my Large Collins editions and 2 I have made enough cash selling these books that the entire collection is now in positive equity for me, ie they cost me nothing and I have money left over to buy more books.  How is this possible I hear you ask.  Well, if you can sell a Deadly Double with DJ for over £250, and numerous other editions for between the £100 and £200 mark, it doesn’t take long to recoup your investment and more. 

As we enter the 50^th anniversary year of The Three Investigators, I feel it’s time to get on with things and get this collection finally completed.  The first thing to do is to take stock of what I have and calculate exactly what is needed, so here we go.

A Tale Told By An Idiot, Full Of Sound And Fury

I received an interesting email recently, bloggers, from a fellow T3I fan who told me of his passion for these most nectar of books.  He and his two mates were so into them that they started their own detective agency, with the intention of solving as many mysteries as they could.  I’m not sure how successful they were as a detective agency, but he did mention the story of the time when one of the boys’ mother was suspicious as to the contents of the briefcase that these three kept their case notes in as they made their way to and from the attic that served as headquarters.  Her reasoning seemed to be that what else would boys have in a locked briefcase in a loft other than tod mags? 

Anyway this correspondent explained to me that his first exposure to the Three Investigators was via the Terror Castle audio cassette, with which he was so enamoured that he sought out the books and went on to be a huge fan.  The reason I mention this story, bloggers is this:

It arrived in the mail recently from an eBay seller who had it listed along with another couple of unrelated childrens audio books.  Of course I snapped it up, as my collection was lacking in that department.  If you haven’t heard these audio adaptations of Terror Castle and Stuttering Parrot, I urge you to seek out a copy immediately; you can probably find them converted to MP3 and available on some bit torrent site or other.  They are absolutely of the highest quality with an outstanding performance by Valentine Dyall as Hitch himself.  They are also hugely faithful to the source books, bloggers, so much so that Bob doesn't get it on with any pre-teen temptresses, in fact he does exactly what he does in the book!  So if the movies pissed you off because they were not exactly faithful, maybe these will be more up your street.

Might There Not Be A Charity Shop In Sin?

We all know that charity shops are fairly nectar places to look for Three Investigators books, bloggers, but how many of us know that these charities also operated an online service for T3I fans?  Well they do.  I was doing my usual daily ritual of searching the corners of the internet for T3I books, when I stumbled upon Oxfam’s online store.  Here they offered all of the same kind of shite you might find in an Oxfam high street shop, with records, clothes, CDs, DVDs and, you’ve guessed it, Three Investigators books!  In fact they had about 8 small hardbacks, all being offered by the Oxfam shop in Newcastle.  Now, I’ve been to Newcastle a few times, bloggers, and never found any Three Investigators books at all.  In fact the closest I’ve come was in nearby Whitley Bay, where I bought a large box of Harold Hill Hardy Boys from Oliver’s Bookshop a few years ago (I’ll never forget Oliver telling me to watch his shop while he jumped in his car and nipped home to get them; I’m sure that wouldn’t happen in Waterstone’s).  Anyway I’m digressing again; sorry, bloggers.  I ordered four of these small hardbacks as upgrades to my own copies; I went for Flaming Footprints, Phantom Lake, Haunted Mirror and Invisible Dog.  All at the frankly awesome price of £5.99 each including postage.  Here’s what they looked like:

 Nice, eh?  That Flaming Footprints replaces the manky one I had with the painted spine and the Phantom Lake and Haunted Mirrors both have much nicer spines than my previous copies, so I can list the old ones on eBay.  The Invisible Dog turned out not to be an upgrade at all, since my own copy was better.  Getting these hardback upgrades is nice, bloggers, but it doesn’t make that number in red at the top of the page go down any and I really need to pull my finger out and get myself involved in some hot paperback T3I action.

A Monster Mountain Begot Upon Itself

So I received an email, bloggers, from a blog follower giving me a hint that there was a small hardback Monster Mountain on ebay’s Australian site.  It was a bit expensive though, but I had my eyes opened a wee bit.  You see, I hadn’t really bothered looking to Australia much for this collection as postage rates are eye-wateringly high so imagine my surprise when I saw not only this small Monster Mountain but another two; along with dozens of other high quality hardbacks both Collins and Random House.  There were in fact easily five times as many Collins hardbacks listed than on the UK site.  I have a theory that these Collins books were very heavily distributed in the colonies.  A quick check of other titles appeared to confirm this theory; there were plenty of Malcolm Savilles, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drews, Pony Libraries, Enid Blytons, Jennings, etc etc.  Check it out if you don’t believe me; here’s a link to the three investigators books currently listed down under:

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_trksid=p4069.m570.l1313&_nkw=three+investigators&_sacat=0&_from=R40

If you look and don’t see considerably more than are listed on the UK site, I’ll eat my hat.  Fortunately, folks, it’s a chocolate hat, so I’m covered in case of any eventuality. 

Anyway, I went ahead and ordered the book and here it is: 

Not bad, if a little worn at edges of spine.  This, of course, completes my small hardback collection and indeed my UK hardback collection as I now have all large and small hardbacks in the series.  Sheer nectar, eh, bloggers?. 

I Am A Brother To Coughing Dragons

WTF?  Another Coughing Dragon?  Surely not.  Yet here it is, bloggers:   

Much, much better than that ex-lib copy that arrived recently, this is a 1^st impression, with Graveyard endpapers (some large Coughing Dragons don’t have these) and very clean pages and boards.  A great condition spine tops this awesome book off and it looks great as part of my now complete large hardback collection.  Time to reflect now, bloggers, on what my collecting strategy should be.  I have a complete run of large hardbacks and am missing only Monster Mountain in small hardbacks.  I think it may be a while before it shows up again, so I think I’ll turn my attention towards adding some nice paperbacks and omnibuses.  By the way, I have added up what I have spent so far in amassing this collection, jesus christ its fucking mental.  I will put together a post about this soon, but be warned it will probably put you off buying books for ever.

This Terror Castle Hath A Pleasant Seat

If you’ve been keeping score, bloggers, (and if you haven’t – why not?) you may well think that I only need one more large hardback to complete the large hardback collection.  Well, if you thought that you’d be wrong.  Why?  Because this has just arrived in the post:  

Get in there, Dotch; it’s a lovely large Terror Castle!  Nectar of the gods!  Dillion!  Beezer!  Etc etc.  Condition is generally nice; it does have a bit of a cup ring on the cover, but I think that might clean off.  If you haven’t checked out the movie version of this book, I urge you to do so.  There you will experience the awesome sight of Bob Andrews beating birds off with a shitty stick.  Fuck knows what they see in him, but he’s clearly got something going on.  I’m not sure I remember that scene in the book but it must have happened otherwise they wouldn’t have put it in the film.