The copies for sale on NK are probably the ones I traded in to them years ago - 1976 is probably a typo.  I'd have to check my email to see what the author said but the game might also have been developed in the 1970s and final published in 1987 (but I don't think that was this one - that sounds more like the Darkus Thel story).

The character sheets pad is harder to find - I think I only had about 6 of them compared with 20-25 sets of the books (1st & 2nd print & metaphysics binder).

I have mainly collected small press RPG items for the last 10-15 years.  Most of the rare items rarely show up on Ebay and then it is sometimes a fight to the end with the usual suspects - for a long time the list of bidders was the same 5-8 people.  I have been a fairly frugal collector (frugal on price rather than quantity) so after losing on Ebay or never seeing the item appear on Ebay, I spend some time tracking down authors and publishers and seeing if they have any old stock still around.  Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

In many cases, I hear the sad stories of old RPGs thrown away:
* "We moved those boxes for 4 moves and then last year moved again and decided not to move them again."
* "I had boxes of those sitting at my parents house but last winter was especially cold so I told them they could burn them." - Strange Acorn
* ...

But, every once in a while, they still do have items so instead of only getting a copy for me, I offer to buy whatever they have left or want to sell.  I would much rather see them get into the hands of people who have an interest in them.  I let the author know what he has and what I think they are worth and then let them decide how they want to go about selling them.  In some cases, I send all the profits back to the author, other times we do a split and other times the author will just sell the lot to me for a fixed price and I can go from there.  I generally offer them up here first.

So, in this case, the author had about 20-25 sets around.  Usually for a small press item like this (that no one had yet), I was able to sell 8-12 sets and then the rest would sit and one sells every so often.  At the time, prices were a bit better at NK so if I had lots of copies, I would also trade a few sets in there - it usually also helped my sales of the rest because their pricing was much higher than I would offer too.  As you can see NK still has some left probably from the 3 copies I sold them in 2008.  Also, I see their stock pictures (now with their website address pasted on the bottom) are actual my photos that I used to sell them.

Yes, that copy probably passed through my hands at one point.

Mars wrote in Real Wonders Tremendous Gambits:* "I had boxes of those sitting at my parents house but last winter was especially cold so I told them they could burn them." - Strange Acorn

That one hurts every time you tell it.  I want to read Wordeseley, dammit!

Badmike wrote in Real Wonders Tremendous Gambits:About a month before Doug contacted Peter Kerestan about reprinting the Wee Warriors modules, Pete tossed the original printing proofs of POTVQ (which he had held on for almost three decades) into the garbage.....   We just scanned a nice copy to do the reprint but man it would have been sweet to have those original prints....

Mike B.

Guess which one of you is kicking himself in the ass hardest now