Forget first - your worst HP/LEC purchase

Mine was a 250 USD eBay copy of Vanity Fair (incl. ML) that was listed as Fine with several photos and looked Fine+ but turned out to have heavy top edge foxing and arrived with the slipcase smashed to bits. Shipping across the pond was about 90 USD too. I got 75 USD back from an unapologetic seller. Good lesson.

Edit: Maybe the subject line comes across as rude - I appreciate the ”First LEC” thread(s), I was just enjoying the rhyme.

>1 GusLogan: It's a learning process!

I ended up not even liking the story or the writing style or the art of my first LEC.

Spending $8 for my first copy of Sindbad. I expected a badly sunned binding but the spine had completely disintegrated. On the other hand my $9 ($5 + $4 shipping) copy of Little Women arrive in Fine condition in a VG+ slipcase and included the monthly letter and announcement so bargains do exist.

My first LEC purchase was The Song of Roland and Kidnapped. What I got was the Heritage Press Song of Roland and a paperback Kidnapped. It wasn't so bad after the complete refund.

My worst experiences have mostly involved booksellers (eBay, abebooks.com, etc.) who could not care less about the books they're selling and shipping.
For example, my 1929 Leaves of Grass started out with a perfect slipcase, and arrived packed in a manila envelope with a split and battered slipcase -- criminal! Same for A Connecticut Yankee.

>4 Jobasha: the same thing happened to me the first time I tried to buy a copy of the LEC Song of Roland. I was sent a Heritage Press release. Must be something about the front matter. (It wasn't my first LEC purchase though.) This hasn't happened to me for any other LEC title.

I once bought what was listed as an LEC (I forget the title) from the Amazon Marketplace and what I received was a very old paperback of a completely different book (different title and author). Tossed the book but was given a full refund.

Worst experience was the single LEC I purchased from Charles Agvent - overpriced and inaccurately graded. I may have been born on a Sunday, but it wasn't last Sunday, Charles.

I could mention the time I ordered the LEC "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and received a children's illustrated "Around the World in Eighty Days" (at least they got the author right!), or the time I ordered the LEC "The Beach of Falesa" by Stevenson and received a generic copy of "The Beach of Falesa" by Dylan Thomas.

Probably my biggest real disappointment was ordering HP Crime and Punishment, only to later discover that this book was serially reprinted and that what I had was a lower quality 1960s reprint rather than the much-recommended 1938 original.

When I was on a field trip with the anthropology club at my old community college, I went to a bookshop in Flagstaff, Arizona on the way back home. The proprietor and I had a chat about the LEC Vanity Fair he had. There were several issues with it: it smelled extremely smoky, the slipcase was broken, stained and sunned, one dustjacket was ripped, the second volume seemed a little warped. He was asking $85 or so, but the condition of it did not inspire that kind of money, nor did I even have that much to spend. He offered a 10% discount, but I still wasn’t able to match that, so I walked out.

A little later, I returned to find my anthropology instructor chatting with the owner, and after letting him know where I’d be, stepped back out. In between the time I last saw him and bumping into him next, he had purchased this book for $55 and was looking for me to see if I was still interested in it. Somehow, $30 was shaved off the price! Sometimes it does pay to have good contacts. I do feel a bit for the bookshop, though…it lost a good deal of money. If only he matched my offer of $67! My win, I suppose...

I still have this (and it's the copy on my blog! https://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/limited-editions-club-vanity-..., but I had to put it in a trash bag with baking soda for about six months to get the smell out of it.

In terms of my own purchasing, I'd have to say the copy of Baron Munchausen I got earlier this year is the least attractive of my LECs. This is no fault of the seller, who described it aptly; I just wanted to have a copy and accepted the...well loved copy I received as a temporary shelf holder until I can afford a nicer one, haha. The binding is banged up, sunned and grimy, but the insides aren't too bad.

I suppose I will mention that I did get a Heritage Tales of the Unknown by Poe when it was listed as a LEC from Powells, but they refunded it without issue. Not the first time I've had that happen, but thankfully I've never gotten any guff about it. It's made me more careful when I order things online, though. I've made a point to try to focus on very early LECs with no reprints or buying items from stores with actual photos.

>10 WildcatJF: oddly, some of my most satisfying book buying experiences have been finding a copy of a book that I want, which was originally published with a fragile binding, with a banged to hell exterior but a pristine interior.

I primarily value the printing, and while I appreciate a nice binding, for me the primary purpose of the binding is to protect the interior, and an overly fragile binding fails this basic utility test. I don't want to own something that I feel like I need to handle so carefully, so I'd rather have a messed up exterior that I don't need to worry about (and could potentially get rebound). Bonus points if it is a sought after title that would be crazy expensive if the binding was in fine condition.

My crowning achievement in this regard so far is the LEC Pride & Prejudice, which commands very high prices because Jane Austen remains so popular and the leather (calfskin, I think) binding does not generally age well. I found a copy that was pristine inside, apart from a few rough page gathering openings that were easy to correct, but the spine was so damaged that it had all but crumbled off. I probably paid a small fraction of fine condition market value for this gem.

>11 abysswalker: Did you have the book rebound? I purposely bought a copy of the HP Ink & Blood: A Book of Drawings by Arthur Szyk with essentially no spine but a fine text block and then had it rebound in full black morocco leaving me with a pristine copy for half the price of a VG edition.

>12 kdweber: not yet. One day!

Who did your rebinding?

>13 abysswalker: The woman who did my rebinding is no longer doing it. I'm in the SF Bay area and binders (as well as everything else) is very expensive. I had to buy an entire goat hide (I have enough left over to do a nice 1/2 leather binding) and the 24k gold hot stamping was also expensive but she did a wonderful job and managed to completely salvage the gorgeous collage endpapers. It cost me $500.

>4 Jobasha: I have found on eBay that several sellers pass off HPs as LECs.

>15 laotzu225: Yes! Amazing, considering they include photos, usually including the title page which lists the publisher.

>15 laotzu225: I think some of them are simply ignorant. They see the LEC copyright notice and assume it's an LEC book despite the publisher's name on the title page.

>1 GusLogan:

I’ve just acquired a 65 USD Fine copy of Vanity Fair. 315 dollars plus shipping (twice) minus 75 still ain’t cheap, but it’s better than the earlier outcome!