Collecting REH

[Vincent]

I mentioned on another thread how today is a wonderful era to live in regarding collecting REH. We are finally living in a time where most of his stories can be found fairly easily - with Amazon and eBay, especially - as opposed to lurking in various used bookstores seeking a lost REH treasure. This is a great time for REH fandom - we should be reading his stories because they are being made available! And the REH Foundation is doing an incredible job of collecting these stories in beautiful hardcover volumes...

Anyway, all of that got me to reminiscing about some of my REH finds back in the day before Amazon, eBay, and (for the most part) before the internet was something used daily by most people.

I first came into contact with REH through my uncle, back in 1983 (I was 13): he loaned me Conan the Adventurer and Conan: Conan the Usurper. That summer, my parents took us camping, and there were a lot of flea markets around. I ended up finding all of the Ace/Lancer editions there (a little of both - some Ace, some Lancer - but I now had all 12). That was a memorable week of seeking and finding.

Another find that I remember was when I went to IU in Bloomington, IN for my undergraduate degree (approx. 1989-1993). There were two used bookstores on Kirkwood that I spent a lot of time at. One occasionally had the hardcover Donald M. Grant books, which I quickly bought up. They sold them for about $13 each. I had never heard of those volumes before, so that was a fun find. I was able to collect about 60% of that set there. That bookstore was a maze beneath some other stores - and was in the basement, so it felt like one was delving into a dungeon.

The other bookstore was called "Caveat Emptor" and I found a great many REH paperbacks there. I was able to discover El Borak because I found The Lost Valley of Iskander and Son Of The White Wolf. I found the The Book of Robert E. Howard and The Second Book of Robert E. Howard, allowing me to discover a wide range of REH characters and story styles. I also discovered Bran Mak Morn through that store, via Worms Of The Earth. That bookstore was filled floor to ceiling with books with narrow aisles between the shelves - it smelled like old books. It was wonderful.

Even though getting complete collections were difficult, I loved finding those treasures, rushing home with them, adding them to my growing REH shelf, and reading them.

Anyone else out there with fond memories of collecting REH?