Supply and Demand

Copyright Ó 1998, James D. Keeline
Reprinted with permission.

James D. Keeline - e-mail: james@keeline.com

Editor's Note: This was originally posted on the Nancy Drew newsgroup (alt.books.nancy-drew) in response to a question about early Nancy Drew's and their prices.

For the first 56 volumes, the only U.S. publisher was Grosset & Dunlap. Unlike many other collectible books (e.g. Zane Grey), the G&D were the first and only printings.

Since Grosset & Dunlap was a mass-market publishing company, it stream-lined the process to keep the books as inexpensive as possible. So, while other more expensive publishers might have printed the date of publication or indicated which print run a book came from, G&D books do not. For this reason, looking at the copyright page is not very informative in trying to determine how early your Nancy Drew book is.

To determine the approximate vintage of your Nancy Drew book, you have to be a detective, like Nancy (or Frank and Joe), and look at the available clues and apply inductive reasoning.

For example, a publisher like Grosset & Dunlap wanted to include a list or catalog of the juvenile series books they offered. It was to their advantage to have this list as up-to-date as possible. Thus, on the early copies, a grouping of pages at the back of the book would contain several pages listing popular series. Often these were other Stratemeyer Syndicate series. This was not accidental but it was not a universal policy either. The lists in the back of the book would be printed as recently as possible so as to list all of their latest books. Thus, the "post-text ads" can be a useful source of information about the printing date of a given book.

For example, look at the post-text ads for an early thick Nancy Drew. If there is a list of Nancy Drew titles, what is the last title? If you know the last title advertised and can determine when it came out, you should have a good idea about the publication year of the book.

In the same way, books which have lists of Nancy Drew titles before the title page (not on the title page!), on the back cover of the book (for the yellow spine pictorial cover books), or on the dust jacket, can be examined to estimate the publication date from these clues.

The best indicator of publication date is the list of Nancy Drew and other series books printed on the dust jacket. The DJs were revised more frequently than the books as new titles were added in the middle of the year.

An excellent reference book, called FARAH'S GUIDE, lists the variations of dust jacket and pictorial cover printings for the first 56 Nancy Drew volumes. This book can be intimidating at first because of all of the abbreviations but once you know how to use it, it can be a real life saver for identifying the first or later printings of a book.

Dust Jackets appeared on Nancy Drew books from the beginning of the series in 1930 through volume 38, THE MYSTERY OF THE FIRE DRAGON, in 1961. Collectors want books with dust jackets in most cases whenever possible. In general, the presence or absence of the dust jacket can represent between 50% and 98% of the potential value of a book. Most of the time, the dust jacket is about 66%-75%.

The number of copies of a book in the used book marketplace is determined by several factors. The first is the number of copies which were sold to individuals when the book was in print. This varied depending on the state of the economy, the price of the books compared to other things which people would buy, and the number of children at the appropriate age group for these books.

The population demographics have varied widely. Most Nancy Drew books were read by children approximately 10 years old. Thus, by watching the number of children born over a given range of years, it is possible to estimate the potential number of children who could have made up the audience for this series.

The statistically significant portion of the baby boom generation was the approximately 80 million children born between 1946 and 1952. Before 1946, birth rates were at historic lows. The lowest birth rate per 1,000 in the population occurred in 1935. Similar rates occurred in 1967. The children born between 1946 and 1952 would have read Nancy Drew between 1956 and 1962. Not surprisingly, the numbers of copies of books during the dust jacket era seen in the greatest numbers were those published in these years.

Before 1956, several factors worked to limit the number of copies sold from this and most other series books. The Nancy Drew series was begun in April 1930, a couple weeks before Edward Stratemeyer died. The entire decade of the 1930s was marked by a socio-economic event called the Great Depression. During this time periond, a significant number of people in the population was unemployed. Like the recent "recessions", those who still had jobs often feared losing them. The end result was that not very many books were sold during this period.

As a new series, Nancy Drew, had yet to gain the immense popularity it holds today. We do know that by 1934 when the FORTUNE article came out that the sales of Nancy Drew were the highest of any series book, even surpassing the sales, at the time, of the Rover Boys and Tom Swift. Since both of these series were on a decline in 1934, it is hard to determine what to make of this "statistic."

After the Great Depression, World War II dominated the minds and business of the American public. As I mentioned, the lowest birth rates occurred in 1935 and remained very low throughout the 1930s and through 1945. Thus, few children, aged 10, were ready to read Nancy Drew between 1940 and 1955.

The difficulty here is that the most interesting illustrations on the dust jackets of Nancy Drew books appeared on the earlier white spine dust jacket formats. Most of these illustrations were by Russell Tandy and they often represent most collectors' mental image of Nancy. Even the casting of Bonita Granville for the late-1930s Nancy Drew films produced by Warner Brothers seems to reflect this image.

For some volumes (10, 13-22), the white spine dust jackets with the Tandy illustrations are the only ones seen until DJs were discontinued in 1962. However, many volumes (1-9, 11, 12) had white spine DJs which were later reissued with new illustrations featuring work of Bill Gillies in 1950. Gillies' artwork seems flatter and less flattering to me. My opinion seems to be reflected in the requests we receive from Nancy Drew collectors.

The materials used in the 1940s, particularly 1943-1948, were very inferior in quality. The dust jackets were thinner and the paper was a high-acid pulp paper which turns brown and brittle with age andexposure to sunlight and heat. These materials do not survive well.

Not every child read Nancy Drew. In many cases, the children would share the books amongst themselves. Often, the most popular child on the block was the one with several of these books. It would be rather unusual for any child to own all of the books unless their family was particularly wealthy and tenacious. This did occur on occasion, but it was rare. Keep in mind that using today's dollars, a typical Nancy Drew book would retail for $12.50 new. The $5.00 hardcovers are very cheap today.

Another important factor to the collectibility of a Nancy Drew book is the version of the text. The first 34 volumes were published with 25 chapters and roughly 214 pages. Beginning in 1959 and continuing through 1977, these books were systematically revised down to 20 chapters and 180 pages. In many cases, the stories were simply cut down. In others, the stories were completely rewritten. My favorite example of this is the original text of MOSS-COVERED MANSION (1941) which was a story about stolen heirlooms. The revised story from 1971 was about stolen missile parts at Cape Canaveral.

Usually, a child growing up in the 1950s or 1950s would read some of the original texts and some of the revised texts. Here it is necessary to determine when the collector was born and calculate when they were 10. By consulting a list of the original copyright dates and the revised dates, it would be possible to determine which books they could have read in their childhood.

Most collectors today try to get at least an example of both versions of the texts and as many different examples of the cover art as possible. Some cover designs were issued for a very short period of time (eg the 3rd cover art for BROKEN LOCKET during the early 1960s pictorial cover era). When a book is in demand by collectors pursuing every cover art variation and it was sold during a short period of time, this book can be valuable if it is in colectible condition.

The relationship between condition and value is extremely important. Not only must the dust jacket be present, it must be in nice (hopefully nearly new condition). Imagine a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is a perfect, like-new book and DJ. If a book in a 10 ("fine") condition is $100.00, then a book in an 8 ("very good") condition is $50.00, and a book in a 6 ("good") condition is only $25.00.

The potential value of the book is determined by a number of factors which aren't easy to quantify. However, as I mentioned, the dust jacket holds a large percentage of the potential value. If the dust jacket is missing or badly damaged, the value can be a tiny fraction of the potential.

Printing is also important beyond the issue of original text versus revised text. Some collectors strive for first printings or at least early ones. Keep in mind that while a given Nancy Drew came out early in the year, say April, the major sales did not occur until the Christmas season (Oct-Dec). Thus, by the last quarter of the year, the printing which sold best was usually the third or sometimes the fourth. This is why these printings seem to show up more than others.

If a collector insists on a particular printing, it is unlikely that they will be satisfied with anything else. Thus if you hear about a first printing selling at an incredible price, a similar second or thirty-first printing is likely to be a fraction of the frenzy expressed for a first.

To summarize, books from the 1930s are in high demand because they contain early cover designs, good paper, extra illustrations inside the book, and are much thicker than many later printings.

Books from the 1940s and early 1950s are difficult to find because the survival rate was low due to the materials used in the 1940s and the lack of a juvenile reading population which would rise in the late 1950s.

Books in the late 1950s sold well and are more available than any other dust jacket era. Even these are starting to become hard to find today, however.

Books in the 1960s and 1970s did not sell as well as those in the late 1950s but tend to be more available since the survival rate was higher (fewer children read each copy) and they are in less demand as many collectors stop collecting after the dust jackets were discontinued.

Remember, you can't look at the copyright date to learn much except for when the story was written. Think of it as a "birthdate" for the story. When you get a new driver's licence, it has an expiration date which relates to when the license was issued. It also has your birthdate. However, you would not say that the driver's license was issued at the time of your birth. Series books, like Nancy Drew, are complicated because they don't have the printing date explicitly stated on the books.

I could go on and on but I'm sure I've bored several people already with this over-long post. I hope it is helpful to some.