tfm wrote:This is really sucking. Here's an image from the inside of my MH:



[ Image ]



As you can see, it is definitely a photocopy. The previous staple holes appear on all the pages and the cover. It may be that someone at Gamelords did this, but I'm now convinced that curled staples indicate a copy. Whether it's a legit copy or not is another matter, but it is not an original.

Interesting. You can definitely see on your copy where the previous staples were when that page was copied. Mine howver does not have that at all. I would give up hope completely though, as evidenced by what Wee Warriors did with the PotVQ, it is entirely possible that they made these photocopies themselves piecemeal and put them in for printing errors and missing pages.

Wait.  Don't chuck your copy of MH yet.



    Before you dismiss your copy of MH as a fake, consider another possibility.  Maybe the people at Gamelords recognized that the staples from the printer were off-center.  They do not match the folded crease.  Perhaps they fixed the interior pages by photocopy and re-did the stapling job.  (It is possible that the printer actualy did the photocopying.)



    Having made such an elementary printing mistake, the printers may have been on the hook for it.



    That would make your copy a part of the original print run, but one of the copies that had a slightly different history.  I was in printing in the 80's.  I have personal experience with a goofed print run very much like this one.     This used to happen all the time...maybe it still does.  



    Sometimes there is different paper stock available that would cost both the customer and the printer less money...which influences printing decisions.  Time constraints are also a big influence on these types of printing jobs...and Gamelords may have been in a hurry to meet a shipping deadline or a convention date.  In fact, this is very likely.



   It is also possible that the covers were re-printed to fix the stapling error, with some variation in the color.  Some ink colors cost more than others and sometimes it took time to get a given color of ink back into stock.  



    Since the interior pages could be corrected by photocopy, that is probably what was done.  The cover could not be photocopied and so it was fixed in a different way.



    It is possible that the printing errors were a boon to Gamelords, since they could sell the slightly irregular copies as well as the corrected prints.  8)   (The printer certainly had no use for them.)



    It is possible.  The visual evidence seems to suggest something like this.



Mark

mbassoc2003 wrote:As regards Montie Haul, the border around the perimeter of the cover concerns me. Aside from it being monocolor, it looks like a product assembled from paper/card that is pre-cut. With the original, the printing runs to the edges because all the sheets are oversized, staples into a book and then giloutined to get flush edges.



My impession is that it is a later copy assembled on the cheap. Either a later rerun by Gamelords, or a fake.



I cannot talk wisely about Tavers as I've never owned one. Could LZ have been running off copies for his business? He has been known to publish his own copies of a lot of stuff, and that would explain the scale and dispersal of the products.

Plaag wrote:My Monte Haul has its staples in the spine not off like bclarkie's copy, yet no photo copy marks like tfm's.

I also have the non-pink copy of Compleat Tavern and its inside front and back covers are not the color of the cover/back cover.



ShaneG.

Christ, this gets stranger by the minute.  Anything at this point seems to be possible and this is starting to borderline on the insanity that we like to call The Palace of the Vampire Queen.  As far as LZ goes, it is also a possibility I suppose, but didnt he always put his name on everything that he was producing?

burntwire wrote:If I remember right I think the Pink cover came from Crazy Egor's. I think we bought it in 2003. I have seen the pink cover version on Ebay a few times but can't remember if they were from the same seller. Hard to believe that someone would bother counterfeiting these. Allan busted Egor one year for selling copies of "The City of Brass".

They were printed right off the Acaeum, too



FWIW, I remember hearing rumors that Igor was selling counterfeit B3s at GenCon in the 1990s.



I've got a copy of Monte Haul Dungeon as well, but IIRC it was very similar to the Complete Tavern, and it certainly didn't have a garish color cover

Well, it's not t.p. yet.  I just don't like the possibility that some asswipe is out there making money off of something that doesn't belong to him/her; especially given that a lot of the startups got screwed over (WW).  



Fakes are an interesting sub-genre to the hobby and deserve some attention.  More specifically, LCOT would not be terribly difficult to reproduce.  The cover paper would hang-up a thief on comparison to a real one, but he/she could approximate it, and that's the problem.



As for my MH, the pages do stick out beyond the cover, like somebody used 8.5 x 11 stock and folded it over.  The lettering on the cover for my CT (pink) is sloppy and not as dense as the CT (brown).



It's possible that the curled-staple versions are legitimate, but we'll have to wait until Allan gets back to us.



Try looking up Gamelords at some of the more popular online RPG resellers.  They are out there.

Plaag wrote:My Monte Haul has its staples in the spine not off like bclarkie's copy, yet no photo copy marks like tfm's.

I also have the non-pink copy of Compleat Tavern and its inside front and back covers are not the color of the cover/back cover.

Good point Shane.  My copies are darker on the exterior color, lighter on the interior color sides.  My copies have flat stapes (with some rusting on the CT).  MHD has red title and "No-Shamelords unlted." lettering on the cover, with brown door/scroll; the back cover is red lettering for the quotation at the top, and brown for the small type.



My MHD says "first printing: February 1982" on the title page, no printing indicated on MHD.

My MHD says 1st Printing 1982 also. Mine is the brown door/red writing printed on tan card cover version.

bclarkie wrote:

mbassoc2003 wrote:My gut instinct is that someone is running off fake digests at a copshop and selling them slowly on eBay. Maybe they aren't active anymore, and maybe the 'fakes' are rarer than the real copies.



I can't comment on Taverns, but that Montie Haul is not printed, its photocopied. Now I can't say Gamelords didn't decide to publish photocopies, but I don't see it.



Who was your source for these? You could PM me if you wish. I'm just interested. I picked up a couple of 'fake' fanzines and cross checked with Brette. Mine are definate fakes. I'm just curious about your seller.



You're right. Lou always stuck his stickers over everything. As for PoVQ, we don't know how many fakes are running around out there, and we haven't found a way of confirming whether any are fake, and how to identify them. If there are any fakes, I'd bet on the ones without the two tone grid.

The seller who sold me my copies was dandplayer:



eBay Feedback Profile for dandplayer

Ditto everything Brian said, I bought these from the same source.  They look exactly the same as the one's that Brian described.  The Tavern is definitely not a "photocopy" but a printing...not as sure about the MH item. They would be very easy to duplicate, though.  It's just the motive that would make no sense.  If you were going to make "fakes' this good, why not try some Wee Warriors items instead, and make a little cash.  I think these were something like $10 buck each.  What kind of profit is the guy making off these?  Anyway, whether or not they are a copy or a printing it's really immaterial, they are not valuable enough to worrry about either way, and they are very cool little items.  

    I'm actually surprised this doesn't happen far more often. Hard to find item, but not exactly getting premium prices, non-tsr, are ripe for exploitation in this way.  Specifically, stuff like Midkemia, Arduin modules, The Companions, Castle Thrax, Serpent Isle, Stones of the Selt, Starstone, other one shots,  etc, unless someone who owns the rights to them was to raise an uproar it seems someone who brought one of these to a Kinkos and made premium quality copies and sold them could pretty much get away with it for awhile.



Mike B.

Deadlord36 wrote:The original staple marks on the photocopies pretty much seals it. Someone took apart a Tavern and photocopied it. The pinkies are fakes. As to who made them, that might take a bit of work, but I suggest every pinkie owner try to recollect where they got it, and cross-reference the info.

I originally asked about Tavern because I didn't recall mine having maps in it (though it did). Guess I inadvertently opened a can of rot grubs.

    Hey, these things are fun to thrash out.  It's not like a bunch of us got stung buying counterfeit POTVQ's.  I don't feel like I wasted my $10-$20 or whatever I paid, now if I had dropped several hundred on a fake Tamoachan, well......

  Once again, I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often with more valuable items.  The pros out there making counterfeit $20's with $10k printing equipment, well if they just knew how much Wee Warriors stuff was going for, they could make just as much money and not have to dodge the FBI......!



Mike B.