It's the book I've personally coveted for years. Finally, I tracked one down (and bought it).
“There are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent,” reads the surprising opening line of Ian Fleming’s Bond novel Live & Let Die, where “to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death,” Bond says he must take (and enjoy) the occasional red-carpet treatment.
Well, if there are moments of great luxury in book collecting – times where one really does feel like they have achieved something – this past week has surely been one of them. I bought a book I’ve long wanted (and thought I might never get).
The book in question - you may have guessed - is this ultra rare (production run of just 940), example of The Man With The Golden Gun – featuring the all-important gold gun to the front board.
The story of this particular state is now almost legendary. As Jon Gilbert reports in his bibliography (and as most collectors know), the idea of embossing a golden gun in gold foil on every one of the planned 82,000 first edition print one very quickly turned out to be a very bad one, when it was belatedly deemed to be far too expensive.
So, some 900-odd books in, the plug was unceremoniously pulled. But, rather than have these early versions pulped, Cape decided to keep them, viewing them as useful to send to Commonwealth countries (in particular, South Africa, New Zealand and Kenya) – which needed these earlier than the UK, to allow them time to arrive for the planned, worldwide, official publication date.
As we know, 940 were made. Who knows what survival rates are today. Now I have one of them!
These close-up pictures below are of my actual book
Why I decided to ‘pull the trigger’
Regular readers of my weekly blog might recall a post a few weeks back, about ‘placeholder books’ – books that we buy not because we think they’re the best we can get, but because they fall into the category of being elusive and so-hard-to-acquire titles that acting now might be the only chance one has.
It’s a type of book purchase we all probably make; the one where we know it’s not perfect [in fact, one might be substantially lowering our standards for], but it’s there, and available, and if we don’t jump on it now, we could be sitting there ruing the day that this was the book that got away.
The Golden Gun I was deliberating over was just such a book.
It was being advertised somewhere so obscure that if you did an online search for it, it wouldn’t show up.
It was from one my secret sources, and in ten years of looking, this was the first time I’d seen this particular title show up.
The sight of it was enough to make me – quite frankly – feel a little bit giddy.
For while I might sell Bond books, I’m still (at heart), a collector.
This was the book I’ve long-thought (and even privately accepted), would elude me. And here I was, finally with a real chance to buy it.
Not promising at first
The original pictures I had to go on (see some of them above), definitely didn't show the book in a particularly good light. They were thumb-nail sized, a bit blurry/grainy and didn't exactly shout things loudly from the rooftops.
It wasn’t like the seller didn’t know what they had – they absolutely knew it was one of the rare 940 (describing it as such) – but it seemed almost casually referenced. The seller certainly didn’t attach the same sort of mystique to it that I saw when I looked at it.
So, should I go for it?
The one thing that buying lots of James Bond first edition books teaches you is that good books terribly photographed are generally better than bad books well photographed – if you catch my drift.
Something told me that this wasn’t a bad book; it was just badly photographed.
So…I umm’d and ahh’d in my original blog – hoping for online friends to give me the nudge that I really needed – which was to tell me ‘yes, buy it; you’ll regret it if you don’t’ (friends, you know who you are!).
And so, that was my mind made up – I just had to go for it.
The long wait...
Although I’d decided to go for it, I didn’t want to ask for any more pictures, just in case it would give away my interest too much. I would just have to take a risk,
I began by offering less than he was advertising it for – just to protect myself in case I was wrong about my assessments.
Unfortunately (for me), this particular seller was being canny. Despite saying it was a fair offer, he also said that ideally he was looking for more. [Can’t blame him, I suppose].
The first week I got in touch with him, he said he wanted to wait till the end of the week, to see if he had any other interested parties (he claimed seven people were interested at this point).
It was a long few days, where I half suspected he was playing me off against other potential buyers. The deadline came and went.
Eventually, he came back to me said he would re-advertise the book, but this time at a slight discount. If the book didn't sell after this price reduction, he promised he would then reduce the book by the same amount each week, until it reached a point where someone decided to buy it.
The 'reverse auction' approach
It’s a clever move.
Auction houses have started doing something similar in recent years – introducing so called ‘reverse auctions’ – where instead of prices starting low and getting people to bid up, they start high and the bidding goes down.
Typically, the auction house starts the item off with an outrageously expensive starting price, and normally reduces it by a set increment each day – essentially turning the auction into a game of who can hold one’s nerve the longest. First to break is the person that buys it.
The tactic is genius really, because it encourages over-paying – because people fear the next decrease will be the price that the item disappears at (even though it probably won’t), and so to guarantee it, you have to snap it up, at a price that’s probably over its value.
So, there I was, in this awful position. Do I go for it, but buy high, or hold fire, hope for a reduction, but risk someone else swooping in?
My decision was to try and negotiate again at my original offer price. It was a no-can-do. And so I decided. I would hold my nerve.
Two further weeks of price reductions ensued – and each week I feared it suddenly disappearing from view.
To my relief, each time it would still be there, reduced a fraction this time, up again for sale.
Strangely though, my opinion was that the balance of power was shifting. I was wondering if lack of interest was starting to get to this seller. Was it because it was summer? Was it just because it was too much? Was it suffering from lack of visibility? I decided I would cut to the chase: “Can't you just advertise it as my original offer price” I boldly requested – because at the current frequency of price reductions, I was still a good few weeks away, and by then (I told him), my interest may have moved to other books elsewhere.
The tactic seemed to work. There it was, at the fourth week of asking, up at the price I had initially offered.
I bought it.
So, what exactly arrived in the post?
I’m going to be honest. The wait for it to arrive was purgatory. Let’s just say I wasn’t that productive at work. I was checking tracking mail statuses far too often.
But…suddenly, it said it was ‘out for delivery’.
Better still, four hours later, the package was safely in my hands.
I decided (perhaps narcissistically), that this was a momentous-enough occasion in my collecting life to do one of whose awful ‘unboxing’ videos – just to keep for posterity.
I felt like this book deserved the special treatment. And so, iPhone positioned, I began to open my parcel: The pictures below give you an edited version!
It’s silly really. I’m 48 years old, but I was trembling with anticipation as I cut open the card envelope, pulled out an inner Jiffy bag, opened this up, and slowly pulled out the book.
Despite being smothered in bubble-wrap, what was that? Yes… a glint of gold as it was pulled out from the Jiffy bag…
Here it is…
Below are some full-book images of my purchase.
It’s a cracker!
The main thing was that I was right about its condition.
Exterior-wise, this book was in ‘far’ better condition than the original photos suggested.
There is some minor splitting, but honestly, I’m blown away by the quality of the golden gun itself – the embossing is crisp, and untarnished, and really bright and golden in colour. It’s unscratched and completely undamaged, with really nice clean edges. It’s superb in fact.
The above close ups show the dimpled cloth – with is – as required – Linson, which has a more dotted texture, rather than the more crosshatched look of the cloth used for subsequent first impressions.
And… this one is EVEN EXTRA special!
Just when I thought things couldn't get any better, they did!
The observant amongst you will see that the spine lettering isn’t in gold foil at all, but silver.
All of the examples I’ve ever seen for sale feature gold spine lettering.
While it’s fairly well known that, on rare occasions, second state examples of The Man With the Golden Gun (ie with no golden gun to boards), do come with silver lettering the spine, I had never heard of first state books with silver lettering.
The seller pictures did show the spine, but foil can look different depending on how it's photographed it, so I admit largely ignored this. My main consideration was the 'gun' itself. On receipt of the book though, the silver lettering was very evident. But subsequent research reveals that last year (in the Jon Gilbert sale at Sotherby’s in fact), we do see a precedent for this (see below):
As shown, up for auction was this gold-gun-to-boards-listed book - but with the same white spine lettering as mine. The supporting listing information describes the binding for this book being blocked - as per this example - “very occasionally in silver.”
That sort of makes my book something of a variant within a variant!
Thanks for reading
So there we have it.
One of my best ever Bond book purchases.
For those of you who’ve got this far – thanks for reading!
I admit this post is shamelessly self-congratulatory.
But, here's what I thought. Getting a book like this doesn’t happen everyday, so I hope you forgive me for this week's personal departure.
When collecting is usually so full of dead-ends, missed opportunities, or books that have slipped us by, sometimes I think it’s soul-enhancing to celebrate our occasional victories.
Normal service resumes next week!
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