Greetings, fellow grognards! Been a while since I've posted, but still I lurk.

Earlier today, I acquired a 1E DMG in remarkably good condition. I don't typically buy material that duplicates stuff I already own, but it was too nice and the price too good to pass up. Knowing about the numerous print runs of the DMG, I got home and headed to the trusty Acaeum page that explains all the print differences...only to run into a wall, as this copy I'm holding seems to fit none of the categories.

Maybe you fine folks can help me out a bit. Here's what I know:

It has to be at least a 6th printing -- it has the wizard logo, the title page says "Revised Edition, December 1979", the book contains Appendices O and P, the red text in the yellow "Advanced D & D" banner on the front doesn't run off the top of the cover, the Todd Oleck and Dave Sutherland artwork is missing, and the ISBN appears on the spine and lower-left corner of the back cover. The front cover is the three-adventurer party fighting the Efreet.

Now here's where the fun begins.

I thought originally I had a 6th Beta, because the flyleaves and endpapers are white, but that can't be the case because it does not contain the survey form, and the reference sheets are not perforated. It can't be a Gamma either, because the text on the spine is not mis-aligned, and it has 238 numbered pages, not 236.

So it's got to be a 7th print then. Process of elimination and all that Sherlockian logic, right?

At first glance, yeah. The textblock is glued as opposed to sewn, and the ISBN appears at the bottom of the title page. That should make it a 7th printing, except that 7th printings according to the database had gone to the face logo, and this one still uses the wizard. In addition, the cover text reads, "Essential reference information for gamemastering Advanced D&D", not "[...] for gamemastering Advanced D&D games", and the angled cover banner only says "Advanced D&D", not "Advanced D&D Adventure Games". The "TSR Games" identifier is still present on the spine.

I'm happy to provide pictures, scans, or any other info that could be helpful in narrowing this down, but as far as I can tell, I've found a printing that seems to fall somewhere between 6th Gamma and 7th (possibly a 7th Alpha?), and which has not been previously cataloged on the site.

Let me know if I'm overlooking something obvious, because I find it hard to believe I just randomly stumbled across a printing of this book that someone far more knowledgeable hasn't already catalogued. On the other hand, like the page on the DMG says on the site "Yes, it's a mess.  Blame TSR -- there were far more than ten actual prints of the DMG by 1987!", so who knows.

Thoughts?

-- Michael

All apologies, I've been at work all day. I'll get some pics posted up tomorrow!

sauromatian wrote in Have I Discovered An Uncatalogued DMG Printing?:
That's the relevant bit. It is said that if you try to count how many stones are in a megalithic circle like Stonehenge, it will drive you mad. If you don't believe that the same danger applies to magical documents like the DMG, try talking to a few of the characters around here. Minds cracked like eggshells, gibbering on endlessly & repetitively about this or that, mere husks of the men they once were. Are you sure that's a path you want to follow? The safest thing to do is to claim that the books belonged to a dead relative & that you don't know anything about them. Once they are sold, try to forget all about it. If you can.

Ah yes, the Clark Ashton Smith route. Well, sad to say, I've been at this a little over thirty-five years (which still makes me a puppy as far as a lot of the serious collectors around here are concerned -- in my defense, I was born in 1977) and at this point I cannot resist a good bookish mystery. So be it; let my gibbering insanity be on my head and mine alone.

Anyway, images uploaded to my Flickr account:

Dungeon Masters Guide | Flickr

I scanned/shot everything I could think of that might help, but if there's more anyone wants to see, just let me know. Hope this helps!

I scan the Acaeum forums every day in the hope that via some exhaustive detective work by one of our collectors here I will find out that my relatively worthless 9th Print DMG is actually a Special 9th Print Alpha D-1 Super Rare Edition worth $10K+ at auction!

It's going to happen, I can feel it!