Description
Originally published in German in early 1986, Mineralogical Record publisher Wendell Wilson and U.S. mineral museum patron Betty Llewellyn both thought it worthy of printing in English and distributed in the United States. Betty thought it so valuable, that she became the co-publisher of the English version, financially underwriting the production of the book so that, as a service to the scientific and collector communities, the book could be sold in the U.S. for less than $100. She chose The Mineralogical Record as her distributor and the English copies were available in July of 1986, selling for just $49.50. The Mineralogical Record sold the very last of these versions on our website and at shows for $30 each, finally selling completely out of them around 2015-2016. We still see them for sale occasionally by dealers, and on Amazon or eBay, ranging from $30 to $120.
For people who were really interested in owning this book as a collector’s item, 100 copies of a special black, leather-bound version was prepared at the same time the English hard bound was printed. These copies also had nice marble end papers, were numbered, and sold originally for somewhere around $150.
We recently found just a few of these leather-bound, buried amongst the inventory at our warehouse. We are offering them for sale here, but ask that you purchase only one, so as to let another collector have a chance to own a copy. Oh, and we’re selling them for under $100, just like Betty would have wanted.
