The advice for anyone getting into Stephen King collecting is to start with first editions. That is a great place to start. I'm still hunting my first edition Carrie, Salem's Lot and Gunslinger!
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As you get a little deeper into collecting, you'll discover it is not hard to develop a collection that is absolutely unique. Why? Because there is so much Stephen King stuff out there! No two collections, even the super duper collections, are not the same. No one has everything Stephen King! In fact, I found myself wondering if Stephen King really has a complete Stephen King collection.
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Some suggestions:
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Here's some things I think are great for collecting and make your collection a little more unique.
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1. Some first editions really are worth their weight in gold. Carrie is one of those, and it doesn't seem to be THAT hard to find. I see a lot of ex-library copies out there. However, I am not a fan of the ex-library stuff. There is a Salem's Lot first edition with a famous mistake on the dust jacket regarding Father C. That's worth a blog post of its own, though. The price of first editions starts dropping with The Shining.
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2. Obviously, anything signed is desirable! His signature seems to increase the value of a book at least 100%. Under The Dome went for $75 special edition -- but a hefty $200 for the signed edition.
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3. Books signed by others. Anything signed by the author is a little more special. No, I don't know why! I like it, but I have yet to figure out why I think it's so cool. I have a signed Michael Collins book. Also a special edition of Talisman, signed by Peter Straub. The artist editions of the Dark Tower books are also pretty cool, and come signed by the author. I have a Dark Tower 7 signed by Whelan.
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4. I like to collect old magazines with King's stories in them. Of course, some the really early stuff I don't collect because. . . uh. . . they're in nudie mags! However, there is still a lot out there. King has written so many short stories and articles that have been published all over the place!
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I like to hunt down the original Dark Tower stories in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I was also excited to find a copy of X-Men Hero's Of Hope which included a contribution by King.
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5. Any special edition books are great. They're not all that hard to find, but they are far more valuable than mass produced first editions. So, the Talisman/Black House double edition in slip case is obviously a good find (and not that expensive). Some stuff is just impossible. Try finding a Cemetery Dance edition of From a Buick 8! I can't. Or how about the zipper edition of Skeleton Crew? What I'm saying is that when you have a chance to get a special book, snatch it up if the price is right.
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Lately Cemetery Dance has offered King books in special edition. Blockade Billy came with its own baseball card, which is neat. And they also have a great edition of Full Dark No Stars, which came with a slip case. So far, everything from Cemetery Dance has been very nice. I still wish Cemetery Dance would put out a special two volume edition of The Stand / Swan Song. Hehe.
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You can also hunt those red leather books. I have about five of them. Honestly, once I had a few, I decided not to continue hunting them. Other than the binding, there's nothing really all that awesome about them. I did spot an entire set -- the whole thing! -- on ebay. I meant to go back and bid, but I forgot. When I showed up 5 minutes too late, the huge lot had gone for $30. OUCH! I wept.
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6. Promotional stuff. Things like the Dark Tower Wizard And Glass booklet that was released with the Desperation/Regulators. Posters and all kinds of things the publisher sends book stores to hype a book.
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7. Introductions. I don't collect introductions by King, because there are so many out there! I don't have enough book shelves to do that. His introductions are always a lot of fun! I love his chatty style of talking right to the reader.
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8. Audio books. Earlier advice was that the audio books would have no value. That's still pretty true! There is little point in collecting the audio books. However, that's not universally true. The Stand and The Mist are both worth the hunt. Ebay often has The Stand on tape going for around $100-200.
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9. Odds and ends. You know, Magnets, book bags, book covers, documents, letters (letters by King can be very expensive). I have a bunch of court documents from King's lawsuit in the Lawnmower Man case. I got it in a huge grab bag of stuff from Betts bookstore. That thing was loaded with strange stuff! You can find a toy metal Christine, or a Christmas tree ordainment of King's House (that's a little strange, if you ask me!)
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10. Old publications about King. By that, I mean all those publications that were out before the Internet became our primary means of information. Stephen King had a pretty neat newspaper, called Castle Rock.
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Fan publications are always cool to find, though they may not have much actual "value" in terms of dollars. I enjoy them! There was a publication called The Red Letter. I don't know much about Red Letter, except that it was small and pretty interesting.
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There was also a publication called SKIN. It stands for Stephen King Information Network. It was in publicationf rom 1994 to 1995 and produced eighteen newsletters. Read more here: http://talkstephenking.blogspot.com/2009/09/history-of-skin.html
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11. Books about Stephen King. These are just all out fun. He may not like how many books have been written about him, but some of them are awesome! Try Bev Vincent's "Stephen King Companion" which has tons of reporductions fo original manuscripts. Also, Lilja's Library is a great print version of the website, including his reviews and interviews.
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I like just about anything by Stephen Spignesi, Michael Collins, Douglas Winter, and George Beahm. Beahm's biography "Stephen King, America's Best Loved Bogeyman" was very good. In fact, I wish he'd update it.
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Are Stephen King books a good investment?
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I think you should not buy Stephen King books as an investment. Of course, I don't buy gold, either!
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Here's the deal: Collect what makes you happy! If you're collecting only to resell, I don't know that the market is big enough for that. I suspect the super collectors end up selling their collections for a loss (but I don't know that!).
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Because I don't collect to resell, I open everything! That means, when something comes to me shrink wrapped, I open it up! Hey, I bought it to enjoy, not to sit wrapped up like it belongs in a store. I never feel bad cutting that shrink wrap off! Well, with the exception of Desperation/Regulators with the book light attached to it. So maybe the best way to say it is that collecting for profit is not a good route for me.
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So tell me, what do you like to collect? What pieces where you most excited to find?
I'm not too much into collecting, but I do have a few that I'm thrilled to own. "Knowing Darkness," for example: what a beautiful book. Overpriced, in my opinion, but since the money has long since been paid, I'm no longer very concerned with that.
ReplyDeleteMy proudest King possessions, though, are two books I actually printed out and then took and had bound as hardbacks: "The Plant" and "The Unfound Door." You know what "The Plant" is, and I betcha I'm not the only King fan to do exactly that.
However, "The Unfound Door" is something entirely different. That is a self-edited anthology of King stories, essays, introductions, and interviews which I retyped and then printed out and turned into an anthology of odds and ends. It's all stuff that had not, at the time, been anthologized: stuff like "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber," "The Glass Floor," "The Night of the Tiger," "Man with a Belly," "The Crate," the screenplay "The General," "The Blue AirCompressor," the original version of "The Revlations of 'Becka Paulson," the Playboy interview, and so forth. It took me an entire summer to retype all of that stuff, but it lookes better than a bunch of Xeroxes, and it was a great way to listen through my entire CD collection several times! And I love being able to say I have a true one-of-a-kind hardback. (That makes me a little like Annie Wilkes, but without all the kidnapping and torture and stuff!)
That collection needs to be updated, now that I think about it. Some of the stuff, like "The Cat From Hell" and "Stationary Bike," has since been collected in "Just After Sunset," and there are other things I've found since then that ought to be included in a revised edition.
What I don't have but wish I did: the original paperback editions of the first four Bachman books. Man, I'd love to have those.
Great post. I've been trying to do a first edition collection as well, but had to put things on hold for a while -- it seems one needs money in order to buy things (???). I would really like to get a collection of his early magazine stories as well. I don't mind the nudie ones either since I've had my own stories appear them and think it would be funny to have such items on display but not tell people why when they come over. I'd probably keep seeing them carefully looking over at the item during their visit wondering why it has such a great spot in the apartment. Eventually I would tell them, my words 'hey, let me show you something' not betraying the fact that it is a Stephen King story until I flipped the magazine open to show them.
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