GUEST: My grandma purchased it when she was in the U.K.

during World War II.

She served in the Royal Navy.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

GUEST: So she brought it back after that, um, when she moved back to the United States.

My grandma passed away, I believe, 2014.

My dad and I were helping clean out her house, and my dad gave it to me from her book collection.

APPRAISER: Okay, okay.

GUEST: He, he knew that I liked Tolkien.

GUEST: I, I've been a big fan for most of my life, and it's actually kind of how my wife and I met.

We were at a Halloween party.

Someone was talking about Tolkien.

I mentioned that I'm fairly knowledgeable about it.

So we started talking, and then, um, I asked her on a date, and I brought it to our first date.

It's in no small part how we met, so... APPRAISER: Uh, that, that's, that's delightful.

GUEST: Yeah APPRAISER: This was Tolkien's very first published book, The Hobbit.

It began as a series of bedtime stories for his children, and he later codified it and published it in England.

And then he spent most of the rest of his life creating this world of Middle-earth.

And by 1954 and '55, the three volumes comprising The Lord of the Rings-- The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King-- were first published.

And that just made his career.

GUEST: Yeah APPRAISER: Back when your grandmother purchased this book, a new copy of The Hobbit would have cost perhaps a dollar or less.

On the rear flap of the dust jacket, on, only on the 1,500 copies of the first printing... GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: of the first edition... APPRAISER: there's a typographical error.

They compare, uh, rightly so, The Hobbit and Tolkien to his mentor Lewis Carroll, or C.L.

Dodgson.

APPRAISER: Where they spell Dodgson's name, they put an E in it.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And that's a hand-corrected typographical error.

And that's how you can tell the true first printing of the first edition from all later printings.

Here we can see the publisher, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, uh, published in London in 1937.

All of the illustrations in the book and the dust jacket itself are drawn by J.R.R.

Tolkien.

Most 20th-century novels, in particular... GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: have dust jackets or dust wrappers.

APPRAISER And this one has its dust wrapper.

Likely, fewer than 20, 25% of those 1,500 copies... GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRAISER: these dust jackets remain.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: They’re, and this one, it shows wear, the book itself, the boards show wear, the dust jacket shows wear.

There's a small piece missing from this front corner.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And the back corner, as well.

But it's remarkably intact, which makes it even scarcer.

Condition and the presence of dust jackets are everything on modern first editions.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So this is maybe a good-plus to very good copy?

APPRAISER: But the jacket is remarkably difficult to find in any condition.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: I would estimate this copy at retail would bring $100,000.

GUEST: Oh, my God.

That is significantly more than what I thought.

(laughing): Oh, my God.

That's... That is a non-insignificant amount of money that I've been carrying around.

(both chuckling) Slightly too casually.

(laughs) My precious, right?

I should stop telling people I have this.

(both laugh) APPRAISER: It’s too late now.

GUEST: It’s too late now, yeah.

(both laughing) That's wild.

APPRAISER: A fine copy and a fine jacket at retail would bring a quarter of a million dollars.

Oh, my gosh.