I’ve been reading Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha lately and just went to order the fifth volume. I’ve been buying the series in hard cover since I was able to get copies used for $5 to $10. Then I hit the fifth volume and suddenly the prices start at $30 for a beat up copy anywhere I look. I looked at the prices for the rest of the series and it’s only the fifth volume that’s like this and I can’t find any reason why that one volume is so rare.
There’s a similar problem with Terry Pratchett’s Eric. You can get copies of the rest of the books in hard cover for only a few dollars each. That one? One very rare printing in it’s original form. If you want to complete your collection you’re looking at hundreds of dollars.
So collectors, join me in lamenting that one piece from your set that costs an arm and a leg for no good reason. Not that it’ll help any but at least we can share the misery.
There IS a good reason, and you actually noted it in your post. A book from a smaller print run will cost more than similar books which had larger print runs. Eric costs more than The Light Fantastic because there are fewer examples for collectors to chase around. Supply and demand.
Eric is a particularly bad one to find in hardcover because of the original print run, at least half of the book being the art. It’s common as dirt in softcover, without the illustrations, but you lose half the book that way.
Gardner Dozois edits an annual collection called The Year’s Best Science Fiction. It’s up to twenty five volumes by now. If you go online, you can find older volumes for cheap prices - some of them under a dollar. And you’ll often see them at used book stores.
But for some reason, the second volume is incredibly difficult to find. Amazon has a few copies for sale that start at seventy five dollars and go up to a hundred and fify.
Back when i was reading the Babylon 5 novels (the good ones at least) i found that the paperbacks for volume 3 of the Centauri trilogy and volume 2 of the technomages trilogy were selling for in the $40s at the cheapest (rest were $7 a pop). I tracked down a friend who had them and borrowed them
Tezuka’s Buddha was released in hardback and paperback. You were probably getting used paperbacks at half of $15 or $20. It’s no surprise a new hardback is $30. They’re nice volumes and will last you forever. Plus so worth it for the story.
Edit: Whoops, misread the OP. You were already getting hardbacks? Well, if you just want to read them, try your public library.
A few years ago, I bought all the books in the Star of the Guardians series. It’s a pretty good set of books and some were readily available in your local bookstore at the time. I had to special order the third and/or last one though and quite a steep price.
