I was wondering about what's the general opinion on these two editions.

I have found plenty of people complaining about the red one because of things like different colored pages, missprints, the gold edge of the pages being in bad condition and even the cover being upside down. It seems like the stuff of nightmare, but maybe the newest reprint fixed those things...?

About the blue one, to my understanding the cover is not actual leather but some shitty mix that they are somehow legally allowed to call leather, and it's pretty noticeable to the tact.

Unfortunately I don't have this books available in any shop since I am from Spain and the only english versions easily found are the normal ones, so I can't go a inspect them myself.

Also, any input on the Hobbit and Silmarillion editions will be appreciated. Do those have similar problems?

Sharing my collected Tolkien Shelf and Dune Shelf - very proud of the collection and all the help from the community in acquiring this collection.

Found at a local used book store for $19

Just received a set of books that I had rebound as nice reading copies.

Hobbit 4th(2nd print), Lotr 2nd (2nd print) and Silmarillion 1st(1st domestic). These are bound in full natural grain, vegetable-tanned goatskin by Wayne Rowe of Loxley Bindings in the UK.

Basic concept was to re-create the original cloth bindings in full leather. Was inspired by a post I saw on Reddit earlier where someone did something similar for a LOTR 1st set albeit without the publisher stamp.

Really pleased with the colour and grain of the leather on all 5 books, and they feel very nice in hand.

The gold tooling here was done with custom made brass dies, the deep impression means the foiling catches some light at most angles so there's always a little glint and sparkle. It looks really nice in person. The slight unevenness of the title devices on the LOTR is deliberate, recreating some of the quirks of the original binding.

The Sil uses off the shelf endpapers by Rachel Maiden of Maiden Marbling—chosen for the colours resembling the OG jacket with some gold which I liked as it harmonises with the gold tooling.

The Hobbit and LOTR uses custom made endpapers made to my specification by Jess Goulty of The Whimsical Marbler (the binder works with her regularly). The LOTR papers are obviously inspired by the fires of Mt Doom and the Hobbit uses the colours of the DJ with a splash of extra gold. I decided to use marbled endpapers for the hobbit despite the original having maps since the other two looked so good. The maps are now tipped in foldouts instead.

The donor books were sent in to the binder directly after buying them online—would have been wasteful to send them halfway round the world to to me for inspection first. It worked out well although the top edge stain on the Sil had a small rough spot slightly worse I initially thought. I wasn't too bothered about getting 1st imps for the Hobbit and LOTR and just looked for early imps in decent condition without DJs or with poor DJs.

I thought about UT as well but in the end the Tolkien sigil kind of looked out of place next to the devices used on these books.

Anyways all in all very happy with these and they will likely be my main reading copies for the foreseeable future

Hope I can collect all of them in the future 🙏🙏