Great stuff as always! The only D&D module I ever bought was Palace of the Vampire Queen; which inspired me to buy the actual White Box rulebook set so I could figure out how to play it. Thanks!
That's a curious module. I was surprised by how many rooms are just empty. I can imagine reading that you really had no idea what to do with it or how to play D&D.
Thanks Old School Rules for providing attribution!!, so many content creators don't do proper attribution of where they get their info. Yes, The Acaeum is the place to check out collector's values of all this stuff. Noticed their list is slightly different than your ranking list -- but I think that's because values change from year to year. Also, I think you were only covering modules published by TSR. As the Daystar West versions of Rahasia and Pharoah (by Tracy Hickman) before he worked at TSR are worth a ton more than the TSR versions, to include the RPGA version of Rahasia. Currently both of these are worth over $9K for near mint -- so would have been in the top 5 rarest adventures in your list if you'd included them, not sure if your list was top the 10 rarest D&D modules or top 10 rarest D&D modules published by TSR.
And of interest -- I don't think B3 Palace of the Silver Princess (Orange Cover) was ever offered up for sale -- TSR ordered all copies destroyed, just people were smart and didn't destroy all of them. Technically, if you want to think of it this way I think these are all illegal copies. 😂
Glad you enjoyed the video! It was a fun one to make. It's hard to say with confidence which of these is the most valuable, since any given sale can be up or down from the recent average. So, this is almost as much about what I have seen available to buy as the ending sale prices. That said, all of these are pretty rare and pretty pricey.
You are absolutely correct. It is the only one that was actually never "sold" at all. The story of the module being ordered recalled and destroyed definitely raises the value for this one.
I sold my copy of Up the Garden Path back in the 1990s, in a Usenet marketplace. The modules were sold at 2 gardening exhibitions???!!!, and the leftovers went to a couple of independent game stores, which is where I picked mine up. I thought the advent of pdf would eliminate the collectability of paper modules. Obviously I was wrong about that. I still have a huge box of old miniatures; why has a collectors' market never taken off for those?
I think a lot of folks have PDFs of older products, but right now the original printings are still very collectible. That Up the Garden Path sure has gone up in value. Interesting question about the minis. Some of them I think are pretty collectible, but a lot are likely worth less (considering inflation) than they were new. In some cases, a bunch of them were produced and the metal minis likely have survived better than the paper RPG products. Also, a number of models are still produced, and while they are not vintage (and maybe even different metal), visually you can get the same product new. I keep mulling over ideas for some miniatures videos. I'll likely start that this fall.
Wow!! Interesting story -- btw - the advent of PDFs have to "some" extent reduced the collectability of paper modules. My guess is the 1st printing of OD&D (1974), which only 1000 were made of the "1st printing" and much less than that even exist, would probably be worth 3x to 5x what it's worth now -- if PDFs of it were not available. So, imagine $80K-100K instead of $18K -- that one in near mint condition would go for now. I for one am so glad that many things are in available in PDF -- otherwise I'd never be able to see some of this stuff, they'd be stuck in some collector's room. Sorry you sold your copy early -- yeah around $12K for a Near Mint quality copy. The currently most valuable adventure according to The Acaeum right now. Although, a consolation for you is that $12K is the Near Mint price -- most surviving copies are probably in average to poor condition, so most people that own this module are looking at getting $3K to $6K for it. Still pretty willd though.
Miniatures are worth money - just not as much. If you have complete sets of the Grenadier D&D Gold boxes for example (and are not missing any of the figs). You can get $100 fairly easily for one of the smaller Grenadier Gold Boxes.
@@AZMountaineer Would still love to see some miniature videos. For miniatures I think one thing is having the box in decent condition -- so the "box" increases their value substantially.
The original con version of Tomb of Horrors is rare/desirable too... with the alternate art before Erol Otus took his stab at it. :-) A reprint of it comes with the Deluxe version of the Art & Arcana book that WotC put out a few years back.
I've got that book (which I really enjoyed) ... my impression was that was the only place you would get a copy of that version was the modern printing. I've never read that it was sold or copies available back at the time. If so, that would definitely be way up there.
@@AZMountaineer Yeah, that is a really stellar book! :-D Even the regular edition is quite nice. I ended up buying both a Deluxe and Standard edition. That way, I can leave out the Standard edition and not let my Deluxe one get beat up. ;-) You are surely right about the con version of Tomb of Horrors probably not being truly available for sale at the time. I'm sure owning an original of that would feel quite good! heh :-)
Yeah -- that's the one I have. The green cover. Although, TSR had the orange cover on their web site a long, long time ago -- managed to download it -- so lucky enough to be able to look at the inside of the orange cover B3 and see the Erol Otus art that caused all the hoopla. The reality of it was -- it is weird are -- we are talking Erol Otus -- but nothing I thought far out. Sad that was Jean Well's only D&D module.
