Centipede will be releasing.....

[mhatchett]

Also coming in two or three weeks will be our two-volume Charles L. Grant set in the Masters of the Weird Tale series. As you know, this is a more expensive set of books and the signed copies will run about $325 per set.  I'm all in, anybody else??

[Scoogs]

Well, I'll keep the Dune talk going this morning. Anybody have any information as to what the signed Dune Messiah is going for on the aftermarket? There have been a couple of unsigned copies sold on eBay, but no signed editions yet. The previous seller that went from $4500 to $3500, subsequently put the book up for auction. It was around the $500 mark, but now the auction is listed as "ended" and not "sold" so maybe it was cancelled. The seller has posted another (the same?) book for sale at $1995. It just doesn't look like these books are popping up on the aftermarket that much, at least not without the first book attached.

He briefly had both auctions running simultaneously a couple of days ago. The newest listing just didn't disclose the book's number.

I haven't seen any public sales of DM so far.

[Sock Monkey]

It sounds like the seller cancelled the sale, despite having bids on it. Perhaps the bidding didn't get up to what they were hoping for, even though that's a dirty practice. There were a handful of people on Facebook that were bidding on it who were, understandably, ticked off.

If the seller did cancel the sale, that's pretty unprofessional. I understand that you might not hit the dollar amount you'd like on an auction, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I once sold a CD limited edition for 99 cents once because I only had one bidder at the opening price. It's not fun, but it is what it is. I would have a hard time doing business with a seller after they did something like that.

[Chuggers]

Only copy I see of the signed Dune Messiah by itself is $2000...

[Splync]

Well, I'll keep the Dune talk going this morning. Anybody have any information as to what the signed Dune Messiah is going for on the aftermarket? There have been a couple of unsigned copies sold on eBay, but no signed editions yet. The previous seller that went from $4500 to $3500, subsequently put the book up for auction. It was around the $500 mark, but now the auction is listed as "ended" and not "sold" so maybe it was cancelled. The seller has posted another (the same?) book for sale at $1995. It just doesn't look like these books are popping up on the aftermarket that much, at least not without the first book attached.

It sounds like the seller cancelled the sale, despite having bids on it. Perhaps the bidding didn't get up to what they were hoping for, even though that's a dirty practice. There were a handful of people on Facebook that were bidding on it who were, understandably, ticked off.

[Sock Monkey]

Well, I'll keep the Dune talk going this morning. Anybody have any information as to what the signed Dune Messiah is going for on the aftermarket? There have been a couple of unsigned copies sold on eBay, but no signed editions yet. The previous seller that went from $4500 to $3500, subsequently put the book up for auction. It was around the $500 mark, but now the auction is listed as "ended" and not "sold" so maybe it was cancelled. The seller has posted another (the same?) book for sale at $1995. It just doesn't look like these books are popping up on the aftermarket that much, at least not without the first book attached.

[Sock Monkey]

While I haven't seen anything in the newsletter, I do see a thumbnail for Michael Shea's 'The Mines of Behemoth' up on the CP site, with an anticipated summer date. I really enjoyed Nifft the Lean and I'm really excited to see this coming soon.

Thanks for the heads up. I hadn’t noticed it on the front page of the site. The cover looks great!

And I just got SUPER excited as GHOST STORY is also listed in the “coming soon” section! Man, I cannot wait for that book!

[JeremyM]

While I haven't seen anything in the newsletter, I do see a thumbnail for Michael Shea's 'The Mines of Behemoth' up on the CP site, with an anticipated summer date. I really enjoyed Nifft the Lean and I'm really excited to see this coming soon.

[Scoogs]

The seller has reduced their prices to $3,500. I'm surprised that there's only two others on eBay, both of which are unsigned and going for $700 (auction) and $825 (Buy It Now). Maybe a lot haven't gone out into the wild or the direct buyers of Messiah are collecting the whole set?

You're right, just the one signed copy by itself. I do see two auctions for Dune & Dune Messiah together. One at $5500 and one at $4525.71 out of Canada.

[Sock Monkey]

I thought about it some more, and it's possible the seller in question is a subscriber, which will likely cause a headache for Jerad.

I'm not 100% sure how Jerad handles the various rights issues across the board, but I can say that I'm a subscriber and when I decided to sell off the first three books of the Elric series (beautiful books, but I just couldn't afford the expense at the time), the rights went with the books. This was also true for when series that started before I was subscriber, like the Lafferty series. I was not able to get my subscriber number for the series because someone held the rights due to buying the previous books (which is the right way to handle it as a new subscriber shouldn't "outrank" the original buyer). I'm sure there are circumstances involving books that aren't necessarily a series that things could be different, say someone wanting to match their number of Blackwater to The Elementals, that might create some more headaches, but I still think that the number should go to the owner of the first title if they want a matching number. I'm fine with giving up my number in those instances.

I'm sure that tracking numbers for all these series must by a huge pain in the neck, though. Especially considering that Centipede seems to have a decent amount of people who buy books to flip (not judging, just an observation). I'm sure that it's expected with big titles like Dune.

The seller has reduced their prices to $3,500. I'm surprised that there's only two others on eBay, both of which are unsigned and going for $700 (auction) and $825 (Buy It Now). Maybe a lot haven't gone out into the wild or the direct buyers of Messiah are collecting the whole set?

[slayn666]

I thought about it some more, and it's possible the seller in question is a subscriber, which will likely cause a headache for Jerad.

[Scoogs]

Jokes on the seller, Jerad has rights follow the books. He was very clear about that in the runup to the release of Dune.

I wondered about that, but could not remember how these were setup.

Got my shipping notice today!

[slayn666]

Jokes on the seller, Jerad has rights follow the books.  He was very clear about that in the runup to the release of Dune.

[Scoogs]

Well, a signed copy of DUNE MESSIAH has popped up on eBay…for $4500.  I’m hard pressed to think it’ll sell at that price, but let’s see…

And the listing says that rights are NOT included. lol, good luck with that.
The last two sales I can find for signed copies of Dune were in January for about $2400.
$4500 for DM with no rights would be kind of stupid on the buyers part.

In the long run, the first three will hold the most value. 4-6 are less loved, though God Emperor does have a solid fan base.
Personally, I like how 4-6 shift the story to the Bene Gesserit, but it took me until my second time through the series to appreciate them.

[Sock Monkey]

Yeah, that's really high. It's not worth that unless you have the matching number of Dune, and that's unlikely.

I agree that without the first book it'll be hard to command such a high price. Honestly, that's about double the going rate for the signed edition of the first book in the series I think as a general "rule of thumb," the highest priced book in the series is the first. Taking that into consideration along with the fact that there are a lot of Dune fans who believe that the series starts and ends with the first book, this might be a hard sell, especially since there is a lot of room for another buyer to come in with a lower price point. Heck, you can get a matching set of book one and two from Mulliens for two grand less. For the record, I do not begrudge the ebay seller anything and wish them nothing but the best. I just find it an interesting topic to think about and discuss.