Anybody want a copy of Dining on Babylon 5?

[Ubik]

Hi folks, I have a spare copy of this book I want to sell. Looks to fetch some silly prices online, but I'd be happy to undercut eBay sold listings considerably. Am UK based. Would like it to go to a fellow fan.

Comment here and PM for photos. Book is is 'good' condition as per Abebooks grading. There's some spine wear and creasing to the top of the spine / back cover, but the pages are clean and the books looks pretty good for it's age.

Can point to a 100% positive eBay profile as well as Discogs if you need credentials!

 

[Springer]

I'm potentially interested, but have no funds until the end of the month. If you haven't sold it before then, let me know! I'm currently watching one on eBay that's starting at £50, but to be fair that's at the lower end of the pricing scale.

A general question for the community: why does it go for so much? I presume it's no more scarce than other mass-market B5 books published around the same time.

 

[Ubik]

Hey Springer, I'd be happy to wait. Drop me a PM. I'd happily knock a good deal off the inflated prices, as I think it's a bit extreme. Yes, it's quite hard to come by now!

 

[Springer]

The collected hardback book club editions of the three trilogies – Psi-Corps, Centauri and Technomages – are rare and go for a lot of money. They're kinda my holy grails in terms of B5 book collecting.

The original 15 volume set of B5 script books are hard to come across now, and the B5@20 book goes for a lot of money. On that note, it would be great if they could do a B5@30 book to complement it.

I didn't realise Dining on Babylon 5 was UK only. I do remember that The Coming of Shadows book was pretty easy to find over here in the UK in the 90s (there was also a special VHS release of The Coming of Shadows to commemorate the Hugo win). The script to The Coming of Shadows was published in several places (JMS' scriptwriting book, for example) so maybe that affected its after-market price?

I got my copy of the Day of the Dead scriptbook from a speciality shop around 2001. That was the only time I ever saw it in a shop. I imagine Gaiman fans would be interested in it as well as B5 fans which I would have thought would have seen the price rise. Maybe the lack of B5 branding, and the lesser popularity of season 5 among the fan community, works against it?

 

[LateArrival]

Thanks for the information. Appears that both "Dining on Babylon 5" and "The Coming of Shadows (A Channel 4 Book)" were released by the same UK publisher around the same time in 1998, while "Day of the Dead" was published in the US in late 98. Only "Dining" commands the high prices, so maybe it had a smaller print run? Or perhaps when the first of volume of "The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski" appeared in 2005 there wasn't as much demand for the earlier one-off script books?

Have seen the hardcover Trilogy of Trilogies - Psi Corps, LoF, TM - appear on Ebay/Amazon in the past few years, and those three JMS Short Stories in the Amazing Stories magazines tend to be hard-to-find on any given day. Several copies of B5 at Twenty have sold recently from $102-$370 in Ebayworld, but if you want to see Something Interesting, look for "Babylon 5 20th Anniversary Conventions - the Fan Experience" (Books and DVDs) over in AmazonWorld. The current six-figure selling price puts "Dining on Babylon 5" into pocket-change territory.


:angel: Actually did ask Captain J. about "B5 @ Thirty" several years ago. Meant to ask about "B5 @ Twenty-Five" and got the years mixed up, but at least the request is/was already out there!!

 

[Springer]

Several copies of B5 at Twenty have sold recently from $102-$370 in Ebayworld, but if you want to see Something Interesting, look for "Babylon 5 20th Anniversary Conventions - the Fan Experience" (Books and DVDs) over in AmazonWorld. The current six-figure selling price puts "Dining on Babylon 5" into pocket-change territory.

I took a look at eBay completed listings. A complete set of Fan Experience books and blu-ray sold for $299 on a BIN, which I think is probably more realistic. Often the Amazon prices are artificially inflated to silly amounts by whatever algorithm they use for pricing.

That said, we're sitting on a goldmine with all the books produced by the B5Books team!