I'm on my second monster manual, second player's handbook, and several of the earlier adventure books the pages have started to crack away from the spine. (I'm very much spoiled by the higher book quality in 1E AD&D or some of the indy OSR publishers - those 70's books were indestructible). Couple of questions:
- Anyone else trashed copies of their books through use over the 5-6 years - bindings cracked, pages coming loose?
It is extremely common to get bindings that fail. It was common with 4e printings. It was common with 3e printings. Every book from the last 20 years has had reports of books that fall apart, even within the first six months. WotC has always been good about replacing those that fail prematurely, and they've always had to do so. If you got books that lasted 5-6 years of heavy use, you got good bindings. Bad bindings are the ones that fail in 5-6
months of use. Those are the ones WotC replaces.
- Were there special editions of the core rulebooks that included a higher quality binding or publishing characteristics?
No.
- Have more recent printings improved the quality of the bindings?
It's an identical binding process, so no. Some books don't wear as well as others; it's mostly random. You get a lot more reports of failures at the beginning of the game's lifespan because that's when a huge number of people buy all three books at once. It's luck of the draw combined with how heavily you use your books.
The 1e AD&D books had library-reference-grade case bindings, which are the most expensive bindings available due to the materials, time, and labor involved. If those were used for 5e books it would more than double the cost of the book. $50 US in 2020 is about ~$15 in 1980 based on online inflation calculators ($1 in 1980 is about $3.30 in 2020). I remember the books costing closer to $25 in the early 80s, which is closer to ~$80 each in 2020. And the 1e books were in black ink with plain, if heavy, paper and they have half the total page counts. 5e has 988 pages in the core books (5e PHB 316, 5e DMG 320, 5e MM 352). AD&D 1e has 480 pages (1e PHB 128, 1e DMG 240, 1e MM 112). Something like three-quarters of the cost of the 1e books was
the binding. That's why they last.
Instead of $150 you'd be dropping $300 to $400 for a set of 5e core books with bindings equivalent to the 1e books, and the only thing that would be better would be the binding. Previous editions have had premium versions of books (I have a 3.5e leather bound premium edition) but I don't think it has better bindings.
