D&D General 1979 AD&D coloring album art sells for $57,500

An auction for the original Greg Irons cover art for the 1979 AD&D Coloring Album concluded a few days ago. The auction was conducted by Heritage Auctions and the item sold for $57,500.00 (including buyer's premium).

Greg Irons The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album Wraparound Cover Painting Original Art (TSR Hobbies/Troubador Press, 1979). This is a treasure about as rare as a Belt of Giant Strength! Many hardcore gamers have never even heard of this D&D coloring book. And the fantastic wraparound cover painting was created by Greg Irons, known for working as an animator on The Yellow Submarine, and his work in underground comix for Print Mint, Last Gasp, and other publishers. This work was created in acrylic on oversized illustration board and signed in the lower right of the 32" x 21" image area. In Excellent condition.

The book is currently available in PDF or print-on-demand formats at DriveThruRPG.com.

The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album (1979), authored by Gary Gygax, featuring art by American poster artist, underground cartoonist, animator, and prolific tattoo artist Greg Irons, is a unique, 32-page coloring book and a playable, solo-style dungeon-crawl adventure, complete with map, rules, and monster encounters.

Using a "primitive" ruleset using two six-sided dice to simulate combat with the player aiming to navigate a terrifying dungeon to recover a talisman.

Featuring iconic monsters such as a lich, beholder, bulette, and Tiamat!

Originally printed oversized at 11x17, this print recreation has been scaled down to 8.5x11 to fit snuggly on your bookshelf!

Photo from rediscoveredrealms.com​

 

[GreyLord]

Hate to tell you this, but those purges happened long before WotC was around (both in the 80's and early 90's). Though I do remember that Peter Adkinson(?) talked about purging a warehouse full of 1E product still sitting on pallets.

The craziest thing about this is I think this was all WotC and had nothing to do with HAS.

It's dirt easy to get rid of warehouse stuff (even back then) and not lose every nickel and dime on it. You won't make a profit, you may even lose money, but you won't lose as much money as you would shipping it to the dump or dumping it like that.

These days, you can sell it to an overseller or overstock company with such things as liquidation and other aspects of simply getting rid of items. They are normally more than happy to take it from you (if you want to give them a great deal, just let them take it for free. That at least saves you from paying employees to do this, and spending money on clearing out the warehouses. However, selling it for cheap will bring in some money on top of that)!.

They existed back then as well (I believe Big Lots was one of the bigger companies to take advantage of this type of stock back then, though there were others). Sure, it would devalue the product (but, shouldn't have devalued 3e stuff, and since they weren't looking to sell the TSR stuff anymore...who cares anyways???) that was sold on those lines, but with what they were doing I don't see how that would have mattered.

It always baffles me why they chose to simply fill a landfill (you do that with stuff that no one feels will actually sell, or that is pure junk, or damaged merchandise that could never be sold anyways) rather than simply liquidate or overstock it...at least from the stories I hear. It's better to have a small amount of money and a tax write off, than either a tax write off that can be questioned, or no money or tax write off at all.

(that's accepting that they wrote it off as a loss at least for the tax write off...If they just threw it away and didn't even include it as a tax write off...that's just...well...WotC was incredibly lucky with the hits they had if they did that. Even major corps would rather do a tax write off or something to that effect than simply toss money out to the dump).

 

[LegendaryGames]

Wow!

I had, and colored in that old album back in the day* and ended up getting another copy to keep in pristine shape. Also, the mini-game in it was actually pretty difficult!

* my preacher actually got it for me for my birthday - this was back in the early 80's!

I loved that book and played the little mini-game inside many times with friends. It was pretty hardcore to survive it!

 

[Starmaster]

The craziest thing about this is I think this was all WotC and had nothing to do with HAS.

It's dirt easy to get rid of warehouse stuff (even back then) and not lose every nickel and dime on it. You won't make a profit, you may even lose money, but you won't lose as much money as you would shipping it to the dump or dumping it like that.

These days, you can sell it to an overseller or overstock company with such things as liquidation and other aspects of simply getting rid of items. They are normally more than happy to take it from you (if you want to give them a great deal, just let them take it for free. That at least saves you from paying employees to do this, and spending money on clearing out the warehouses. However, selling it for cheap will bring in some money on top of that)!.

They existed back then as well (I believe Big Lots was one of the bigger companies to take advantage of this type of stock back then, though there were others). Sure, it would devalue the product (but, shouldn't have devalued 3e stuff, and since they weren't looking to sell the TSR stuff anymore...who cares anyways???) that was sold on those lines, but with what they were doing I don't see how that would have mattered.

It always baffles me why they chose to simply fill a landfill (you do that with stuff that no one feels will actually sell, or that is pure junk, or damaged merchandise that could never be sold anyways) rather than simply liquidate or overstock it...at least from the stories I hear. It's better to have a small amount of money and a tax write off, than either a tax write off that can be questioned, or no money or tax write off at all.

(that's accepting that they wrote it off as a loss at least for the tax write off...If they just threw it away and didn't even include it as a tax write off...that's just...well...WotC was incredibly lucky with the hits they had if they did that. Even major corps would rather do a tax write off or something to that effect than simply toss money out to the dump).

TSR did use a few methods to get rid of overstock. In the mid 1980s they repackaged bundles of modules and sent them to game stores at a reduced price. There would be about 4 modules with a bright yellow tag on the front that would say something like: Get this bundle for eight dollars if you buy a 1e hardcover (for $15 back then). My local game store sold them to me without having to buy the hardcover since I bought everything from them anyway.

They also used Gen Con to dispose of some stock in the 1990s. In addition to their regular booth with the new product, they used to have what was called the "TSR Classics" booth where they'd sell older stuff dirt cheap -- usually at 75% off retail price. I picked up gobs of boxed sets and modules at the classics booth. They also dumped a lot of new old stock in the Gen Con auction store. I picked up a lot of shrink-wrapped $1 modules in the auction store back in the 1990s.

 

[Stormonu]

@GreyLord , if you haven’t read this about the WotC acquisition, it’s very interesting and talks about the warehouse of old stock.

Perhaps the most relevant part:

I toured a warehouse packed from floor to 50 foot ceiling with products valued as though they would soon be sold to a distributor with production stamps stretching back to the late 1980s. I was 10 pages in to a thick green bar report of inventory, calculating the true value of the material in that warehouse when I realized that my last 100 entries had all been "$0"'s.

Of note, this was before 3E was even a glint in the eye, before the idea of OSR and at a time 2E was in decline (and 1E was around 10 years dead), fighting against the likes of White Wolf and MtG.

 

[LegendaryGames]

TSR did use a few methods to get rid of overstock. In the mid 1980s they repackaged bundles of modules and sent them to game stores at a reduced price. There would be about 4 modules with a bright yellow tag on the front that would say something like: Get this bundle for eight dollars if you buy a 1e hardcover (for $15 back then). My local game store sold them to me without having to buy the hardcover since I bought everything from them anyway.

They also used Gen Con to dispose of some stock in the 1990s. In addition to their regular booth with the new product, they used to have what was called the "TSR Classics" booth where they'd sell older stuff dirt cheap -- usually at 75% off retail price. I picked up gobs of boxed sets and modules at the classics booth. They also dumped a lot of new old stock in the Gen Con auction store. I picked up a lot of shrink-wrapped $1 modules in the auction store back in the 1990s.

Wow, there's a blast from the past! I bought at least one or two of those "yellow label" combo packs at my local game store back in the 80s!

 

[Stormonu]

Wow, there's a blast from the past! I bought at least one or two of those "yellow label" combo packs at my local game store back in the 80s!

I never saw those yellow bundles, but I do remember picking up several Spelljammer box sets ( Astromundi & War Capains) in Kay-bees in the 90’s for a quarter of the normal price.

 

[Starmaster]

I never saw those yellow bundles, but I do remember picking up several Spelljammer box sets ( Astromundi & War Capains) in Kay-bees in the 90’s for a quarter of the normal price.

Kay-bee (a.k.a KB, K-B toys) used to heavily discount some of their games when they put them on clearance pricing. I bought discontinued board games from them at various times and they'd be marked down to around one-half to one-third regular price. I also remember seeing discontinued TSR modules in their stores that were marked way down for clearance (around a buck, if I remember correctly) at various times. But that was probably Kay-bee taking the loss; not TSR or the distributer since that's what they did for all their discontinued games.

 

[talien]

Kay-bee (a.k.a KB, K-B toys) used to heavily discount some of their games when they put them on clearance pricing. I bought discontinued board games from them at various times and they'd be marked down to around one-half to one-third regular price. I also remember seeing discontinued TSR modules in their stores that were marked way down for clearance (around a buck, if I remember correctly) at various times. But that was probably Kay-bee taking the loss; not TSR or the distributer since that's what they did for all their discontinued games.

Same. I bought almost all the adventures we played for AD&D at this ridiculously low price. I'd just buy everything (Because for a buck each, why not?). This is also how I got full Weapons & Warriors sets if I remember correctly, for very cheap.

 

[Starmaster]

Same. I bought almost all the adventures we played for AD&D at this ridiculously low price. I'd just buy everything (Because for a buck each, why not?). This is also how I got full Weapons & Warriors sets if I remember correctly, for very cheap.

That's where I got my W&W games, too! At some point, I became obsessive about keeping records of how much I spend on my hobbies, so I did a quick search just now and found that, in July & August of 2001, I bought two copies of "Weapons & Warriors: Castle Siege Game" at the local Kay-bee since they were marked down from $27.99 to $9.99 each.

 

[Stormonu]

Same. I bought almost all the adventures we played for AD&D at this ridiculously low price. I'd just buy everything (Because for a buck each, why not?). This is also how I got full Weapons & Warriors sets if I remember correctly, for very cheap.

Weapons and Warriors? Was that like Crossbows & Catapults or a D&D thing?