Collectibilty of Adventurer's Guild

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Some years ago, you might recall Rhea Shelley blasting on the scene with a full set of these. Now, as you know, these adventures were issued to only participating stores by the RPGA at the time. So the only way to buy them as collectors, was to go get them directly from those participating stores that happened to have held onto them. Rhea did just that in amassing his collection and actually mentioned that there were very few locations he wasn't able to reach out to in doing as much.

How do you guys feel about these? Do you have many of them? Should these go the way of Jade Hare coverless due to simple production; which in some instances was electronically issued?
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[cgould42]

I do not have any of them but I think they are interesting and would eventually like to own a set. I would however only ever pay a nominal fee for them as even though these are rare they were not professionally printed and could easily be duplicated.

Cheers,
Curt

[tfm]

Value-wise they are a good collectible. TSR collectors want them. I have a few, but am not interested in active acquiring them one at a time. If a complete/near complete set should appear, I'll put a huge bid on it, but my time is more important to me. I don't want my headstone to read, "He died trying to collect TSR." They're like the IFW. A good collectible but time-wise prohibitive.
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"This is cool."

[Mars]

I think these are very collectible but in the scheme of things they are very rare and difficult to collect. A few years ago, I tried to contact all of the Canadian stores listed in Polyhedron and was able to track down 0 of the adventures. Most stores had a vague recollection of the items but they either lost them, recycled them, game them away as prizes or the DM running them at the time took them. I imagine a similar result for the majority of other stores.

I would think that completing a set would be next to impossible now.

There has been one seller on Ebay that seems to have had a number of them for sale though and they have sold with varying success. The D&D related ones go well but the other ones sell fairly cheaply (some below $25).

[tfm]

They are hard to find, which makes having a complete collection of TSR/D&D next to impossible. That said, I happen to think that there is much more out there in the TSR department than people think. I think its pompous to assume that our collecting circle represents TSR/D&D collecting. You know there's got to be quiet collectors out there who have had the intelligence enough to avoid the whole 'collecting scene' with its seedy, dishonest underbelly. Obviously, there are collectors out there who picked up things as they came out or have attended gaming conventions for decades. Collections like than can stand up to any of ours. Only pride would make someone think otherwise. I'm pretty content collecting what I collect. If I was starting brand new today, I'd choose a current company and collect every product they produce. In 40 years it would be like D&D is now.
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"This is cool."

[scribe]

Completist work is a tall order. I hope the tome can come as close as any one person ever will, with the goal being images and info on everything.

I think copies of these are certainly something to be concerned about. I am not so familiar with this being a big problem in our community. Certainly will never be as bad as phishing scams which are threatening to destroy eBay as we know it. Thats a matter for another thread. These modules are so tough to get, I am not sure an interested party could infiltrate into a position to pervert.

Something else to consider are those interested in play settings. The Greyhawk people and Dragonlance people could be even more driven to assemble complete collections. And the availability would certainly stand in the way those goals. Planescape Sketchbook is a fine example of this. PS collectors are possibly more driven to get their hands on that item as some of the general completist are. The end result is a $2000 book.

All told, I have managed to get as many as 55 of these, in one large purchase and several trades. IIRC, I have only 40 unique which is nearly half of those available. With trades, I could probably get within striking distance, if I wanted to.
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[Mars]

That is an impressive collection of Adventurer's Guild modules. At the beginning, there were only about 100 stores that are on the list so the number printed is very small. I think that most stores also tend to throw this stuff out if it had been sitting around for a couple of years so the window of opportunity to get them would be limited. I'm sure there are also a number that did save them but I don't have too many doubts that various collectors have called the rest of the stores on the retail lists so anything that has survived has made it into someone else's hands.

With the Jade Hare, I think it was a lot easier for it to survive. People who ordered it did so with the card from the D&D boxed game. It was fairly easy for those that received their copy to put it into the box and leave it there. I think about 50% of the Jade Hare copies that show up include the boxed game.

[Mars]

[OolEurts]

I think they're interesting but wouldn't pay more than $20 per copy for them, hence I'll probably never own one.
This is one item I'd be perfectly happy to have photocopies of since there was no artwork or any other fancy publishing associated with them.