I'm on a mission. I've written about it before in a previous post. It's to collect the entire original Goosbumps book series with original (now considered retro) art covers.
If you're not familiar, Goosebumps is a childrens book horror series that came out in the early 1990s (the time that the kids today are referring to as the late 1900s). I read the books as a kid and loved them.
A few years ago I learned that my mom had given away my childhood collection to a neighbor of hers. I can't blame her for it. She had stored them for me for around 30 years and had finally given up on me taking them home with me. It was a classic "you only know what you have when it's gone" scenario. I've been hunting down the books ever since, trying to re-collect the entire series. I must say, it's been a lot of fun tracking them down, so thats a major plus to the situation. There's a certain "high" that you experience when find something that you've been looking for. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.
I've been searching for the books for some time now, maybe 2 years, and I'm slowly picking away at gathering them all. I have a few sources that are my go-to places to find them, including antique malls and online estate auctions. There are quite a few sellers on FB Marketplace as well that I'm saving as a back up. I generally hate dealing with FB Marketplace.
So I recently found a decent amount at an antique mall as you can see.
I hate when they put the stickers on the front cover. I'm a bit picky with them in that I want them to be in decent shape without a lot of damage to the covers or spine and stickers do not help the matter. Used books in good shape is a big ask for a paperback book series, especially given that it was printed over 30 years ago. But I've had decent luck so far so I'll keep up with the plan.
The books I'm finding range in price depending on the seller. I've seen them as low as $3 and as high as $10 on average. I've even seen one or two instances of a crazy list price of $60 for one book! My average price per book right now is probably around $4.00 which is very reasonable. These are Canadian dollar prices, of course.
My most recent find was a pretty big score. I bought 64 books on an online auction for $60.00. Not all of the books were the classic series and many of the books I wanted were in poor condition with a lot of damaged to the covers and spine.
Some were also doubles to books that I already have so I ended up just keeping the ones in the best condition. From the lot I came out with about 23 new books to add to the collection, which was a pretty big win for me.
I'll save the damaged books in case I can't find better ones to replace them and will probably try and sell all of the ones that I don't want to keep, at some point.
There are 62 books in total in the series and as of right now I have only 18 more to find. As of now there are three different prints versions in my collection as well that you can see in the next photo.
There's the new print version with throwback retro style art. These ones don't have the series numbers printed on the spine for some reason, they are a different size book compared to the true classics and they don't have the raised bumps in the "Goosbumps" banner, which makes them a little more boring.
I have 8 of these types and I'm trying to replace them whenever I find an authentic retro book. The next two versions are more subtle with slight differences. The original prints from 1992 had the Goosebumps logo printed in standard block lettering. Later prints in 1994 started printing the Logo in the stylized spooky lettering. The arrows I drew on the picture point out what I'm talking about. I'm fine with either of these style of books because they are both classic and have the numbers printed on the spine and mostly look consistent. One day I may try to find the entire series of both styles but for now I'm just focused on completing the whole set. Something a little strange and unexpected for me is that this... journey (for lack of a better word)... has sparked a strange sort of nostalgia kick in me that makes me want to find other books and toys that I had as a kid. For instance, recently I saw Simpsons comics for sale that got me all excited, and then the entire series of original Animorphs books. Then there's the games "Seige" and "Fireball Island," and man, I would kill for a classic Tamagochi! I've seen all of these things for sale but haven't purchased any of them. I'll focus on the Goosebumps for now and reassess once that task is completed. I just think that it's strange how strong this hunt for a feeling of nostalgia has been for me.
So anyway, I just finished reading "The Beast from the East" which was okay and right now I'm reading "The Horror at Camp Jellyjam." The latter is one of my favorites in the series and I'm enjoying it quite a bit, even as an adult.
Some of the books are better than others so maybe after I collect the entire series and finish reading them I'll do a post on my ranking of them or something. Until then, thanks for reading my post!