Funny, I had just reported this right before coming here to see if there were any new posts.

Yes, this item has come up quite a few times before.  It's a bootleg compilation of miscellaneous materials, often sold under the guise of some rare, no longer officially published product from TSR.  It's readily available on the Internet for free, and that's about what it should be worth.

Here's some info on it:

The Lost Handbook | RPG Item | RPGGeek

There are hard and softcover versions of this book  They are typically printed through POD services.

You can see how many this particular seller has managed to sell of the "rare" book, so it's been a lucrative it for them:

eBay listings

This link might not work for some reason, but if it doesn't, just search for "lost handbook advanced", without the quotes, and click "sold" items and you will see about 26 that have sold over the last few months for about $100-138 each!

Unfortunately people are paying way more for this than it's worth.  Is the seller being deceptive?  Probably, because they are selling a modern printed book as "Rare", and it's a bootleg book being loosely portrayed as a legitimate TSR product.  The seller buries these in the legit items,, and when the heat is on, drops it for a while.

It used to be sold by a few other sellers on eBay, but I most have stopped selling it now.

ashmire13 wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:That’s a lot of copies sold by 1 person. But if it’s no longer available for POD could they have bought so many early on? Or are they getting them printed elsewhere now?

Its never been available POD through a legitimate channel I don't think. Its been commissioned POD by through one of the companies that are happy breaking the law.
Like, I could create a mashup of all the OD&D books in PDF, put a cover on it calling it the OD&D Compendium or the Complete OD&D Manual, and then approach one one of the POD companies and ask them to print me 20 copies and sell them as the rare, OD&D Compendium that TSR never released. It wouldn't be a lie, nor would it be illegal for me to print myself a single copy for my own personal edification. But it would be illegal for me to sell it.

However, with all that profit to be made selling illegal and illicit products, and none of the IP holders taking action to enforce their IP, why should anyone involved in the process of selling such products care?

Why do we care? It takes money off the table that would otherwise be pushing up prices, and it teaches newbies the lesson of caveat emptor. Indeed, if it were not for the existence of the PDF which will be around forever, then these would be seen two decades from now as collectable homebrew compendiums produced to a pretty high standard.

One could argue with this particular product that it gives the buyer a window on a wide variety of otherwise disparate quality writings and may open the door to some of these buyers to explore the hobby more seriously.

Copyright is fast becoming an outmoded concept in the digital world. One only has to look at the prevalence of freely distributed PDFs immediately upon release of any new product. Yet, companies can protect themselves if they choose to. They can also litigate. But they choose not to, and like the bootleg albums of the 70's and 80's, I can only assume the publishers consider IP infringement a good thing because it gets their product into the hands of those who otherwise would not purchase anyways. That's faulty thinking to my mind, but it's their IP and their business, and they are profitable nonetheless. So I now defer to their stance and see it as grey area of the market and a necessity in promoting the hobby.

ashmire13 wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:I read it was available on POD via Lulu very briefly some time ago.

I’d like to have a copy for myself, but not paying £80 for it

I understood it was a fan produced PDF collecting together stuff from all sorts of magazines.
There were about three of them as I recall, with faux orange spines and 2e-esque art covers.
There still available online to download for free. I don't think they've ever been charged for, and I don't think they've ever been on a legit site, but I could be wrong.
I'd be surprised though seeing as some of the stuff is from JG, some from WD and some from Dragon/Dungeon. I'd like to see those IP holders agree on jointly allowing their stuff to be published.

ashmire13 wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:You’re right Ian, it is a fan produced thing, but I’ve only read it was briefly sold POD via Lulu, but got pulled pretty quick
From the pdf I’ve read, it’s basically pages of Dragon, Dungeon etc with even the adverts for Traveller etc still in place so it’s literally the exact pages from the magazines and nothing rewritten.

Would just be quite a nice thing to have for curiosity and reading.
The pdf is all well and good, but of course you can’t replace actually reading a book

Yeah. I really like PDFs, but there's only so long you can look at a screen and read. I've not come across anything that compares to hardcopy, even e-ink I found a strain after a while. Maybe the nextgen kids'll have eyes more suited to digital screens.

for_the_love_of_the_stuff wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:From what I've been able to find out, Lulu had it available as POD for two months until they figured out it was infringing and took it down.

Whoever reported thefriendlyrobot definitely spooked him and made him take down his eBay listing. There's currently no listings for this book on ebay I can find.
He probably suspects it was me, due to my questions.

The Lulu POD copies were softcover, however the newer ones being sold by thefriendlyrobot were hardcovers.
The binding difference, plus the amount of them he has sold recently, would lead me to believe that thefriendlyrobot had a PDF and was getting these printed himself.

If this is true, the softcover ones should be more valuable, as they were ostensibly only produced by Lulu during a brief two month window in 2015.
That being said, there's no reason someone couldn't make another softcover perfectbound version, so there are no guarantees as long as full PDFs are out there to be had.

However I've only ever seen one softcover version of this on eBay, and I obtained it as soon as I saw it. It wasn't too expensive.
It's sitting on my shelf now, and I can confirm it is a very interesting read.

I found the pdf (including the cover) and had it printed on Lulu for like $40.

for_the_love_of_the_stuff wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:
I have the same PDF. When did you have it printed on Lulu?

Within the last two to three years.

Yeah, true. With something this old and obscure, I doubt anyone even gives a shit anymore.

My guess is they would have taken the money and given you the books.