I looked at this auction and I think they are fakes.

Here's the quote from the seller on the white box auction:

taphilo wrote:As stated, I Xeroxed anything used often and wrote all notes in regular notebooks and so seldom had to open the books.

The seller stated that he xerox'd anything he used (or thought he might use) so I'm sure the paper should match up to the correct time period.  The staples don't quite look right to me (but maybe its just the picture) - all of my Balboa items have the same size staples.

I think it is clear by looking at the margins and where the page number appears that the books have been size reduced.  The seller would have had this done to save on price - half the number of sheets of paper and the machine would have done it for him.

I think a better question would be why would Balboa release a product like this?

By the late 70s when these were released, Balboa was an established company which printed 10 or so issues of Spartan magazine and a few wargames and were a games distributor.  The production values on all of these items are very good:
* colour covers
* professionally trimmed - no pages sticking out like the Ebay books
* pages are filled with text, small margins and multicolumn - Ebay books have lots of wasted space in margins
The Balboa items that I have which are solid colour cardstock covers with black ink use a texture paper (such as Spartan #9) or a parchment type paper but the Ebay books look like a flat cardstock.

The Ebay books look like something that was put together by hand and never trimmed (which fits for a 1 off xerox) but doesn't fit with any of the Balboa products that came before or after.

Then also consider the timeline of production dates:
Spartan #9 is copyright Aug 1975
Complete Warlock is July 1978
Warlock's Tower is 1979

From 1975-78, Balboa would have understood the demand for such a book and put it into production.  I find it doubtful they would have created such a subpar product to test the market especially when Spartan #9 is essentially Complete Warlock and has much higher production values.  Complete Warlock has at least 5 different colour cover prints - I'm pretty sure at least some of these colour cover versions would have been out before Warlock's Tower was released.  So why then would Balboa revert back to another subpar production quality for book 2?  Both books in the Ebay auction look like they are on the same paper which doesn't make sense since they weren't released at the same time.

The quality of the books and timing don't make any sense as something Balboa would release but fits right in with the seller's practices of xeroxing.  The seller may have thought these were the copies he bought 30+ years ago but probably hasn't thought about for the last 25 so that memory is undoubtable foggy.  I can't see these as being anything but reproductions made by the seller - sorry Bill.  It just doesn't make any sense for Balboa to go through and create all the art, do the layout and then sell copies that were put together by hand when everything else they release for 5 years previous were "professionally" done.

since you mentioned the staples, i decided to check. they are a match to the "full-size" Balboa items (in appearance, outside book size and inside book size). but that is hardly conclusive of anything of course.

I have been looking for a Reston Publishing Runequest hardback for a wee while - but just missed this one while munching on my breakfast  


** expired/removed eBay auction **


Although it doesn't have the nice colour dustjacket so maybe I didn't miss out that much  

Thanks ...I was beginning to think that the problem was with my searches rather than the fact that they are just hard to see in nice condition!  I think I may remember the one you are referring to - there was a problem with the binding < sadface >