Recent Pan Acquisitions

I recently visited a secondhand book store here in Melbourne and uncovered four out of five of these Pan editions from the 1960's.  

Apart from the "From Russia With Love" movie tie-in from 1963 the other covers are part of the Raymond Hawkey series.  Three of the books appear unread which is amazing for their age.  Their spines are immaculate.

The novel purchased online was the "For Your Eyes Only" shown below printed in 1966.  It's a rare 16th printing by Pan that used a much thicker paper stock causing the paperback to be fatter or thicker than normal.

As well as the spine size variation you can also notice the colour of the text on the spine is white which differs from the light blue on the regular copies.

The images on the front and rear covers are identical...

except the thicker version has an area showing pricing in red which is absent on this other copy.

This thicker version is difficult to find without an uncracked spine.  My copy also has some cover damage.  It's certainly not the best copy out there but it was within my budget.

Overall I was rapt with these purchases and can't wait to add images of this thicker version to the Less Common Books And Ephemera page on PizGloria.com.

James Bond Is Everywhere

Here's a post that's a little different.  My wife and I visited a plant nursery last week, and while we were looking for a particular type of rose we discovered these three other varieties.   The first was named "For Your Eyes Only"... 

... while the second was named after Dame Judi Dench.

... and the third had a Midas touch.

Our purchase ?  Well they didn't have the specific rose we were after so we ended up purchasing this lovely Dahlia...

"What's In The Box ?"

The James Bond collector John F., a frequent visitor to PizGloria.com, has decided to sell his extensive collection of quality books.  It feels like every day there's a new batch of books posted on the Facebook group James Bond Collectable Books Worldwide by John to excite us collectors.  I was fortunate to purchase the items in the box that arrived today.

And here's two of the books I snapped up...

These are English Second Language (ESL) abridged novels created for students learning English.  I already have similar copies of both books however these copies have slight variations.

The first book to compare are these covers of Ian Fleming's "Diamonds Are Forever" adapted by Patrick Nobes with a cover illustration by Francis Phillipps.  Both were printed in the UK however the Bulls-Eye logos in the bottom left corner of the covers differ.  

The copy on the left with the yellow, black and red logo was printed in 1989 by Hutchinson and has an ISBN of 0091299411.  The copy on the right with the white logo was printed in 1991 by Thornes and has an ISBN of 0748710183.  These are only minor differences but still interesting as a collector.

The other book is "For Your Eyes Only" which is one of Ian Fleming's short stories collection.  These editions were published by Longman Structural Readers and simplified by Norman Wymer with a cover illustration by John Holder.  Both were printed in Hong Kong.  

The copy on the right was printed in 1975 and has further text in black on the cover compared to the one on the left which was printed in 1977.   Both copies share the same ISBN of 0582537924.  Again not much of a difference between covers but probably more obvious than the "Diamonds Are Forever" above.

As for the remaining items in the box, here's a sneak preview.  These are probably more interesting... and harder to find in the wild.

Ian Fleming Pan Books Variant Cover... Not !

Near my work is a small fashion pop-up store where the owner has generously placed a small box of books outside on the footpath for anyone to take for free.  I've already picked up a 1960's paperback copy of "For Your Eyes Only" similar to this one earlier this year.

Yesterday as I walked past and had a quick peruse through the box, as is my rutual, I noticed a black spine with the yellow Pan Books logo.  Immediately I thought it might be a "Colonel Sun" paperback as that is the only Bond paperback I could think of with a matching spine.  The corner of another book lay on top however I glanced the name "Fleming" and was excited.  I shuffled the books around thinking perhaps I'd found a variant Ian Fleming cover... and then uncovered this spine (Note: I moved the book for this photo):

And here's a photo of the cover:

Sadly no mystery Ian Fleming Pan Books variant today !