*sticks finger in air*

Pick the number of RPGA members and work upwards from that, based on their estimated future sales over the next few years?
Although they must've overprinted the Rs, especially the early ones, considerably.

Pushing 10k, each? More? :?:
(But less for the RPGAs, I'd guess).

No hints that the surplus was pulped; just that they were flogged off cheap.

grodog wrote:Someone could ask Frank directly:
Dragonsfoot • View topic - Q&A With Frank Mentzer. Part 1

*lol*. Now there's an idea! :D

(Trusting he's got a better "memory" for print runs than some other ppl I won't name ;)).

Frank's reply:

Frank Mentzer wrote:

grodog wrote:Do you have any estimates on the number of copies of R1-4 that were printed by the RPGA?  I was thinking the published versions, but if you have any estimates on prepubs and tourney copies, that would be useful info too!

IIRC, we did 5,000 each of R1-4 at the printer. It mighta been 10, don't recall; but no more. Thousands were destroyed by the PoG and we don't know specifics, so the numbers in circulation get really dicey. A LOT of R1 and R2 were destroyed, they were earliest and sold worst; Egg of the Phoenix & the sequel had a ring to it and had more players, and was thus more popular.

At each tourney we ran line printer copies for all the DMs, and for some of the later tourneys I ran special limited printouts on my office character printer; those were prolly all numbered & autographed.

The DM copies could have been in the 15-30 range for R3 & R4 and the other unpublished ones (and the ones published in Poly, Bigby's Tomb and Great Bugbear Hunt). Spring Fever only woulda had 5-6 tops; it was the first Masters.

Those special limited numbered autographed jobs, which look different from the DM copies, mighta been in the 10-15 range.

F

Thanks for checking, Allan. (And to Frank for the response).

grodog wrote:Frank's reply:

Frank Mentzer wrote:A LOT of R1 and R2 were destroyed, they were earliest and sold worst; Egg of the Phoenix & the sequel had a ring to it and had more players, and was thus more popular.

Hmm... A few questions back to Frank on that, if possible.

Does he mean "sold worst" at the original time of release?
And destroyed.... when?

Since those were somewhat post-released in the UK via Imagine (for the UK D&D Players' Association only at first), my understanding was that a large percentage of the "surplus" copies were sent over here.
Eventually (May 1985/Imagine #26), all(?) the remaining copies were flogged off cheap to the general public: and that reads more like a re-stock, so I kinda presumed they might've dug out any spares kicking around the US, too (us Brits being perhaps more willing to pay for "old stuff" and reducing the effect on US customers that their "RPGA only" mods were being flogged off to all and sundry).

This would make sense in the context of R1 being the most frequently seen on eBay, rather than being the rarest (in terms of "original" sales); and that a large percentage of Rs & RPGAs sold are from the UK.