It certainly is not a mistake that was "caught quickly." It is more like a recurring oddity. This means that there should be thousands of these books. There are five different print runs of Nancy's Mysterious letter with the mistake from 1952, 1953, 1954, 1956, and 1957. I recently saw a listing in which the seller stated that it was a mistake that was caught quickly, so only a few books survived with the mistake. The 3rd art Lilac Inn dust jacket went through two printings, but the 2nd art Hollow Oak dust jacket went through just one printing, so it is the harder to find of the two.Īnother book often mentioned as RARE is Nancy's Mysterious Letter in the blue tweed binding with the title printed on the book as The Nancy's Mysterious Letter. The 3rd art dust jacket for The Mystery at Lilac Inn and the 2nd art dust jacket for The Message in the Hollow Oak are often described as RARE but are just scarce. Some books are much more scarce in dust jacket, such as The Mystery of the Fire Dragon, because it went through fewer printings before the books switched to the picture cover format. It is harder to find the books from the 1930s than it is to find the ones from the 1950s, but they still can be found fairly easily. There are some books that are harder to find than others, but all of them can be found without a great deal of trouble. The vast majority of these books are not RARE. However, any blank endpapers edition is scarce enough that it would be acceptable to refer to it as RARE. The later printings with blank endpapers and dust jackets are very scarce but not necessarily RARE. The first printing dust jackets for the first three booksthe jackets that list only to Bungalow Mystery on the front flapare indeed RARE and warrant the use of the word. Without the jackets, they are scarce, and with the jackets, they are very scarce. These books are highly scarce and would come closest to being RARE of any Nancy Drew books. There are very few Nancy Drew books that actually are RARE. I recommend that buyers change their default search to items ending soonest so that they get to see all of the Nancy Drew books up for sale presented in a nondiscriminatory fashion. This means that desirable Nancy Drew books may not ever get seen near the top of the search. Best Match is not the best match for Nancy Drew collectors! The human brain is the best discriminator of collectible books.Īnother problem with Best Match is that it uses the seller's Detailed Seller Ratings (the stars seen at the top of the feedback profile) and whether the seller is an eBay Power Seller in order to determine the ranking of the item. Best Match sorts the auctions by keywords that it considers to have a higher value. This will give the buyer an idea of how much to pay.ĭuring early 2008, eBay changed the default search option on the site to Best Match. Do a completed item search for Nancy Drew sorted by highest price first in order to see what the prices have been for the collectible books. The eBay search page is a buyer's best friend. If a person has just decided to collect Nancy Drew books and has no idea which books are more collectible and how much the books are worth, then that person needs to spend at least a couple of weeks viewing auctions and reading all available information on different websites.
I am trying to educate buyers on making better decisions. I have discussed the definition of RARE as well as several related eBay topics at length in my blog.
A book is not RARE when it is up for sale on eBay all the time! Another definition of RARE states that a RARE book is one that a dealer will see only once in his or her entire career. The definition of RARE that I use states that RARE books are ones that show up for sale around once every 5 to 10 years. Note: The word RARE is grossly overused on eBay and is usually capitalized, so I have decided to capitalize the word on this page as a salute to those sellers who are so fond of using it. It is because the prices of certain common Nancy Drew books are getting out of control that I felt that this page needed to be created. Unfortunately, this can result in buyers paying far too much for commonplace books. Even worse, many informed sellers grossly overstate the value and scarcity of the books that are up for sale. New buyers need to understand that many sellers are uninformed about the books that they have up for sale and often make incorrect statements. Buying and selling Nancy Drew books is a big business on eBay.