Not sure of value, but you can tell the earlier 70s editions apart by the orientation of the cover illustration. The earlier ones are landscape oriented, so that the longer sides are horizontal, depicting three skeletons. Later printings are portrait oriented, so that the longer sides are vertical, & show one skeleton.

There are lots of different prints of these - something like 10 of Dungeon and then the rebranded Classic Dungeon and New Dungeon, etc.  There are variations on the colour of the skeletons (white or purple) and if there is writing on the back of the box.

If you have any documention (handwritten stuff) by David Megary then it would probably increase the value.  Certainly a prototype version would do well too.  As a guess, a first print TSR dungeon might be around $50-$60?

There are so many prints of this set that the game itself isn't too hard to find but 1st prints (or early prints) usually do better.

lapsminn wrote:When I was a little girl, by brother was friends with David Megary.  When David was developing the original game he would come over and we would play it together.  I loved it and he gave me the original handmade game with board and pieces as a present.  When the game came out in 1975 he also gave me a version of that.  Does anyone have any idea what the value of this is?

1st print value, as above.
Original prototype with backstory & provenance; that's another ballgame altogether. Would be useful to see pics, etc., but given the history/context for that, a finger-in-the-air, sight-unseen guess might be $500-1,000, possibly more - not that I'd be in favor of selling just for $$ of course, albeit your call.

Nice piece of history there.

The 1973 handmade original is two r's and the 1975 board printed version is one r.

Wow, thank you lapsminn for poting those images... I think that's an excellent piece of gaming history!  My daughters and I have played many games of Dungeon! and I was glad to show them - they recognized the pieces and board right away

I don't have the depth of knowledge that many here do, but I'd have to think the prototype would fetch over $1000, should you choose to let it go.

This is off-topic, but is there a thread around here (or another resource) that has values of one-off items (like this, manuscripts, the real one-of-a-kind stuff)?

If I were you, in no way would I ever part with such a piece of history.  Hell, I'm sitting here in awe just being able to see it and realizing that it still exists. Thank you for that opportunity.  Wow.

His daughter Martha can be contacted at:

last_night_at_fencing (at) yahoo.com .