The Rising Price of AD&D

How many of us have gaming shelves at home that look something like the above? I know I do. In fact I'm flat out of room in our rather modest home. That, however, has not stopped me from seeking to round out my collection. I have a fairly large 1eAD&D collection, but have always wanted to complete it with copies of all D&D related TSR publications pre 1990. However, this has become very hard to do on an educator's salary.

My recent energy has been on Judges Guild's publications and other stuff Gary Gygax wrote or worked over the course of his life. I'll tell you what though, JG stuff has begun to be out of reach as well. I was looking for a copy of Temple of Ra Cursed By Set

And the cheapest I could find was 34.95! Now, that may seem like a reasonable amount, but we were buying old TSR modules fro under 10$ not too long ago, and you now can't find a lot of them for under $50! For a guy with a tight $20 a month game budget it makes me pause.

I was also hunting down a little gem called The Abduction of Good King Despot by Will Niebling from the Gary Gygax Presents line. I think the reason it has risen to $40 is because Gary happened to make the off hand comment that this was his "favorite module of all time." Talk about a comment increasing the market value! So for the nonce, this gem will be on hold for me as well ...

All of which I should take as a good sign, since what I would hope these prices mean is that there is a growing crowd of 1e players out there looking for old product. At least that's what I hope is happening. It could be newer gamers looking for the old stuff just to have a piece of the past, with little intent to use it or game with it. I mean, I'm not wanting to begrudge a collector their treasures regardless of intent. But all the better for collectors who are actually involved in the game. Said the same thing for years of comic collectors who bought rare issues just to have them and hardly read the comics they purchased. Something evil in that approach if you ask me.