Hi everyone,

I have not been here for a very long time (used to contribute to the Acaeum archive about 15? years ago) and couldn't really remember my original Forum-account, so I made a new one. I have some very rare, if not unique, items in my D&D collection that I am thinking of parting with:





For more photos please see: goo.gl/photos/kqfRXejgt4e133Jr9 (hi-res)

I have in my possession thirteen unique sheets of (polyester?) 'transparent positives' with D&D cover art that were used for the production/printing of at least two Dutch Basic D&D modules (B1Dutch, and B2Dutch) and BasicDutch, but which may have been used for other (international) printings as well. I received these sheets personally from Selecta about 15 years ago as a gift [1] - Selecta being the former publisher of D&D in The Netherlands in the late 80's. Each positive comes in a transparent sleeve, which includes stickers and handwriting from employees (and since it's in English, I assume these are the directions from the original TSR staff meant for the Selecta staff).

You can also see - especially in the Larry Elmore piece (which was originally used for TSR's CN2 Conan The Mercenary module [2]) - that the positives are actually photos of the artworks themselves, that in several occasions are taped or pinned to a wall/surface. Looking closely at the edges of the artworks, I believe that some may be photos of the original paintings/drawings (but I may be mistaken), whereas a few are more clearly photos of printed copies (such as the Dragonlance cover). And some of these also come with their own notes. The sheets are absolutely stunning to look at, especially with backlight, showing a high level of detail, clarity and radiant colors. The positives vary in size, but are either about 20.5cmx26cm or 10cmx12.5cm.

(The sheets did not photograph easily due to their transparency, so I put some against my PC monitor, so you can see the positives a bit better (if you don't mind the pixels of my monitor).)

I am deciding on prices, but inspired by the "B3 Palace of the Silver Princess negatives"- post [3] and Scott's advice, this post is really to get your opinions on these positives, including an indication of their possible value as collectables. And I want to give serious collectors a heads up before I start putting them on eBay (private sales possible).

So what do you guys think?

Best regards,

Richard

[1] hence my contributions to the Dutch Foreign Editions, such as BasicDutch, B1Dutch, and B2Dutch
[2] non-D&D: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5 ... 3,200_.jpg
[3] B3 Palace of the Silver Princess negatives

PM sent Richard!  

Hi,

I chose not to sell them at the time so they are all still in my collection. My plan is to put a few that are dear to me on display at home, and possibly sell the others when I get round to it. After my initial post I received many pm’s of interested buyers, so I guess these types of items are rather sought after.

Greets,

Richard