Bloom wrote:wrt Folio Society, I have replaced most of my favourite books in paperback form with nice hardback editions and all of my best fantasy novels with the original hardbacks. Ive done this in the last twelve months and have taken quite a financial hammering, ha!

I've been going through this process for about 7 - 9 years now, unconsciously at first. Our income starting increasing, so I began to pick up hardcover replacements "for the heck of it". Then, I began to enjoy them for themselves. I'm not necessarily a 1st edition seeker, but I have tried to acquire well-designed editions with superior materials. My paperbacks (for the most part) are now either gone or relegated to the limbo of a box in my closet .

Books and food are both worth paying relatively high prices for in my view and it is only in modern times that degraded versions of both have been made available cheaply for mass consumption. 'Expensive' nowadays is actually 'normal' and still great value.

This is precisely my view. My grocery bill reflects that philosophy, too, LOL.

Hmm. Now Im confused. The OP says

Kered0871 wrote:
even my 4th-8th printing PHBs are not as robust as the 3rd! ... The pages in the 3rd printing are on thicker more stiff paper tool heavier weight.

This is correct, I believe. The 6th I have is on heavier stock (and more than adequate, IMO) paper, but the earlier (1st - 3rd) printings are on even heavier paper. The bindings are also still sewn, up to around the 8th print of the PHB. Deimos here (inactive lately) could probably tell you more about the relative merits of the bindings, but IIRC if you count the stitches between the front pastedowns and the ffep, you'll find there is some variation, and not always in the direction of "more, later", though I think the earliest MM and PHB prints have a higher count than the rest.

I decided on retaining the latest prints I could get that still have superior (if not quite the best ever used, which I think was overkill) paper and sewn bindings, because there are illustrations and some errata incorporated into the later ones that were missing in the earlier. Hope that made sense.

Bloom wrote:Im the same. Im not a 1st edition collector except when, as is often the case, the book is coincidently of better quality than any subsequent printings. For example Beevor's Stalingrad is printed now by The Folio Society and I will get that instead of the Hardback 1st edition. When I was younger I did not notice how filthy many of the paperbacks i considered made up part of my library were. As many were hard to find paperbacks I was glad to get anything - it took me two years to get my hands on Cugel's Saga in the Early nineties. Abebooks has revolutionised all that.

Yeah, ABE is great (as is Alibris), although I do prefer eBay for being able to see photos of the actual book being purchased. If you're a Vance collector, I imagine you've come across kingcrabbooks by now. I'm in the process now of trying to get my hands on some more Underwood/Miller Vance titles at a price I can justify to myself (more importantly, to my wife). I've toyed with getting a VIE or CVIE (the 2nd printing should be coming out soonish), but I'm a dustjacket/cover art fetishist, and also the organization of the volumes seems a little haphazard.

Yes, very useful. I'll make a post in the classified thread soon. Any idea if a 2nd/3rd printing PHB is rare - involves along wait? I expect to pay about $50 for a nice one.

I think they come up fairly often. If you're looking for very nice condition, the wait might be a little longer. The Classified section is a good idea, though. People here often come through on a request there. Price sounds about right, but I'm not sure as I don't track them closely.

I hear ya. I love some of the cheesy old artwork too, and do have a few issues of Galaxy, Fantasy Book, and Fantasy and Science Fiction laying around, and have also kept some of the paperbacks with favorite covers. It's been tempting at times to go that route, but part of my drive toward hardcovers has been space. I no longer have constraints on the amount of space I could devote to this stuff, really, but I've gotten so I despise clutter. A couple of big bookshelves full of hardbacks, and a couple of boxes of RPG material is about all I can tolerate before I get all anal. Having to pick up after the wife and the boys is bad enough, without worrying about my own crap being all over the place.

One cautionary tale I would offer.

Make sure that the early print PHBs you obtain  (whether purchase or trade for) has all pages intact, or at least present.
For some reason I have had bad luck the last few years.
I had purchased a few early PHBs and in some of them the last few pages were missing, or cut out from the binding and just sitting inside the book.
Pages 123-128 are sometimes removed for playing (there are game relevant tables) and ordering other TSR stuff BITD (Products list).

Of course by the time I noticed this, the sales were long past and nothing could be done.

They were perforated for removal in the printings I have, which are all 3rd or later.