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.

New Secondhand Bookshop Open

It's not uncommon for me to write about an oft visited book store that has just permanently closed.  So it was great to recently discover a new secondhand book shop in Prahran.

Snailfish Independent Book Store on Greville Street, just off Chapel, has been trading for a few months now.   I spoke to the owner, Nathan, and he was very enthusiastic about his books and business.  He explained that he plans to concentrate on stocking political, art and fiction titles while also saving books from ending up in landfill.

After a brief chat I had a wander through the two rooms of book shelves.  I managed to find two Ian Fleming titles, a nice Pan Books - Raymond Hawkey series copy of "Thunderball" from the 1960's and a 2019 copy of "Casino Royale" from Arcturus Publishing Group. 

I wish Nathan every success with Snailfish and I plan to visit again soon.

Elusive Pan Cover

It's not a first.  It's not even a second.  But when I saw this "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" published by Pan Books in 1964, with blue/purple text on the cover, I felt compelled to buy it.

I already have a similar cover in my collection but that one proved so difficult to find the first time it's hard to go past the same cover again.

This copy was part of a lot of three Pan James Bond paperbacks, all with the Raymond Hawkey inspired covers, for sale online.  I first noticed them available around July/August.  When I saw the same lot again over the weekend I thought "that"s long enough for someone else to have purchased them" so I negotitated with the seller to just purchase this one title... and voila.

I'm still looking for an elusive 1st edition of this paperback title, but this 3rd is still a great find and a quite scarce cover that one day may help me eventually trade up to a 1st.

Fantastic Find (Finally !)

On Saturday afternoon I was fortunate to visit Bound Words in Hampton.  It's a great secondhand store with a wide variety of books, and it's always clean and well organised.

As I entered the store Ailsa, who was sitting behind the counter, recognised me, smiled and said "Hi".  She then remarked "Sorry, but I don't think we have any new Bond's on the shelf".  I replied "That's a shame.  I'll have a look anyway... just in case".  And I'm glad I did because there sitting on the shelf was a copy of a book I've been searching for for at least a year.

It was a copy of "From Russia, With Love" published by Pan Books in the early 70's.  There are five books in this Pan White/Model series with a colour logo.  I already had four in the series but the fifth was proving elusive to find in good condition.

So to say I was stoked finding this copy in excellent condition was an understatement !  And as it completed the set I couldn't be happier.  I guess if there's one lesson collecting Bond paperbacks has taught me it's that there's always a book on a shelf somewhere that you don't have yet.

I'm hoping to scan this new addition to my collection and add it to the PizGloria.com website soon.