Something for everyone in this lot (A&E, etc.):  
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RS1 Red Sonja Unconquered in SW:


** expired/removed eBay auction **


The first Legends of the Lance newsletter:


** expired/removed eBay auction **

shadeun wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:
Reshrunk? Shrink looks a bit dodgy. Maybe thats a thing with RS1 I dunno. I wouldn't pay SW prices for it though...

IMHO, that shrink is on par with that era.  Can't say 100% without seeing it in person.

stratochamp wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:shrink modules are now treated like the ne plus ultra versions, regardless of the condition of the module.

Ne plus ultra? Double plus good, but only in the Eurythmics sense.

What on earth is this?

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stratochamp wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:By the way sauromatian its been good to see you hitting your high contrarian stride of late. You had a down period for much of this year where you were only mildly snarky. Welcome back.

The great reopening had us all optimistically looking forward to a world where cynicism would fade away, where we would have better things to do than tear each other down. Now it's back to the end-of-the-world as normal.

This copy is of course missing a page, hence incomplete and the toner marks on this would lead one to believe that the pages do not belong with a black foldered version. This would not be the PVQ to buy at anywhere near this price (in my opinion).

I've always wondered as to whether a copy serves its purpose with some collectors. If you buy it and never intend to sell it, does it matter if it is a fake if you don't know? The enjoyment for most is to own something rare. Obviously the fraud part is deplorable, but it's sort of like a doctor prescribing a placebo for someone with the flu who is begging for antibiotics. In the end, the person gets better and doesn't know the difference.

But a PDF is not an original, Ian. The collector doesn't get the joy of THINKING he owns an original.
I liken it to a blind man's wife. She can be as ugly as Trump, but if she tells him she's as pretty as Scarlett Johansson and no one ever tells him differently, he believes he's married to a gorgeous woman. So in the end, does it really matter that he is not, aside from the lie? Now, obviously anyone who creates a fake book and sells it as an original should be hung by the grapes, but that aside, here's another example: a high-priced item is shrinkwrapped and looks perfect, but inside the book are four pages that have huge coffee stains. The only way anyone would ever know is if it was opened, which would pretty much never happen. So every collector who owns it has the pleasure of having a minty shrinked item.
When I was actively collecting, condition was never extremely important to me, aside from items that a canine has obviously used as a urine strainer. I was more concerned with owning one of each item, and not for the "I've got one and you don't" factor so much as the pleasure of looking through a book and seeing the art and content, and differences in printings. The advent of PDFs is part of the reason I paroled a lot of stuff to other collectors. Why have a Necromican sitting on my shelf collecting dust when all I really care about is the content? Better someone else have it who WILL enjoy ownership. And obviously the commercialization of RPGs didn't sit well with me. Once the days of sending a module to someone for free/pittance or a little less than you paid for it vanished, the romanticism of being a RPG collector died out for me. For the most part I only auctioned off items that several collectors wanted so as to give everyone a fair chance at it. The money was irrelevant.