Lost Tamoachan (1979)

[tfm]

Title: Lost Tamoachan
Item Code: Collector's Edition
Type: Tournament adventure module
Copyright: 1979 by TSR Games
Author(s): Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason
Artwork: David C. Sutherland III, David LaForce, Jean Wells, and Harold Johnson
Cartography: n/a
Place of Publication: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, United States
Printer: n/a
Format: 26 loose-leaf sheets with cover
ISBN: n/a
Cover Price: n/a
Mass: 132g
Dimensions: length 27.8cm, width 21.4cm, thickness .3cm

Additional credits:

Editing: Harold Johnson
Able Assistance: Dave Cook
Much Needed Help: Lawrence Schick and Jean Wells

[Ralf Toth]

Tamoachan is stabilizing at around $1,400. Did you notice the last seller's comment (eBay 190039368777)

"And no, it wasn't ONLY available at Origins '79 because most everything that didn't sell ended up at the Dungeon Shoppe."

This makes sense to me, too. Can anyone else confirm this?
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[scribe]

hmmm. I am trying to think. Some items were not necessarily produced by TSR such as the tourney Fazzlewood (I think).

I cannot confirm but maybe someone could ping Mentzer about this.

Does anyone know who was the day to day manager of the Dungeon Hobby Shop?

[The Collector's Trove]

Howdy,


Ernie Gygax was the Day-to-Day manager of the Dungeon Hobby shop - after Terry Kuntz, and one other interim fellow (I'll have to check my notes).

Tsojconth and Fazzlewood was produced by MDG and distributed by MDG but I have yet to see an advertisement for it in Dragon or anywhere.

I'll be running an auction for Ernie in a couple weeks, followed by Kevin Hendryx, and Dave Cook just before Christmas.


Futures Bright,

Paul

[scribe]

I also saw an advertisement in the MDG tourney guide where MDG was offering Fazzlewood from the previous year at that year's convention. This would might explain 2 distinct printings of fazzlewood or might offer clues on what they would do with overstock after the convention is over.

[grodog]

I remember reading ads in other research materials about stock sold by MDG later, though it may well have been in Acaeum posts.

TSR intern and friend of RJK Doug Behringer has stated that he purchased multiple copies of both LT and GToI (Origins versions) from the Dungeon Hobby Shop/TSR as late as 1982-ish, on the advice of Frank Mentzer.
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Allan Grohe
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http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html

Editor and Project Manager, Black Blade Publishing
http://www.black-blade-publishing.com/

[tfm]

I recently picked up a Lost Tamoachan that was signed by the author. What's interesting is the number style:

Black numbering/Blue numbering




As you can see it's very different from the LTs numbered in blue. It does suggest that LT was numbered by at least two different people. I would even venture to guess Jeff Leason probably numbered all of the black ones himself.

Although there are undoubtedly others, I've only seen a handful of the black-numbered LTs.

[scribe]

My copy appears identical to the one above. I wanted to add scans of the front and back and additional information for research purposes.



Back cover:


_________________
Musings:

Contents-
Wrap cover printed both sides
1-40 numbered pages printed front and back
3 character sheets printed front and back
1 character sheet for cutting into 3 cards? printed front and back
2 notes to the DM printed front and back


My #12 is in black ink. The 2 looks similar to the 2 in Kynan's #72 copy.
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[oldgamer]

Hi guys, 1st post. Initially found your site looking for information about a "Lost Tamoachan" scenario I found in my old game closet. Cleaning out my mom's estate, and finding all sorts of old games and such.

I went ahead and listed my copy, which is #291 on eBay. I won't spam you with an actual link, but if you are interested in bidding or seeing a final selling price, search eBay for "lost tamoachan", it will pop up.

I listed the item last night, and within 1/2 hour it had an opening bid of $850 from someone, lol, caught me by surprise.

[tfm]

It should go for $1100-$1200. In the heyday before the values for high-end modules tanked you might have gotten $1700 for it on ebay.

If you have any items you have questions on, please feel free to ask. Brown box D&D sets can still do pretty well, although they are about 60% from their high.

Did you purchase your LT through the RPGA or a game con?
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"This is cool."

[oldgamer]

At the time I was a teenager, and we were driving from Indiana to Canada to visit relatives. I talked mom into detouring to Lake Geneva to see what I thought would be a huge gaming facility. All I found there was, I believe it was called The Dungeon Shoppe or something like that. I picked up this copy there. That would have been in 80 maybe? 79 perhaps, if Origins was held before August.

I was going through mom's estate this last week, and in fact found a note where mom had written to grandma about going to Lake Geneva and how, "She hadn't seen what the big deal was.",lol.

I she was still alive, she would be tickled to see the trip was more of an investment, lol, it would have given her something more to write about, I guess.

Unfortunately, I remember selling a white box set to a local bookstore a decade ago for twelve bucks, and I know I trashed a d&d manual a couple of weeks ago while cleaning everything out.

However, I still have some stuff, lots of old wargames to go through. Nothing this collectible, though, I guess.

[tfm]

That's a nice story, like a belated Christmas present!

White boxes can do okay, but nothing like the upper-end TSR stuff. The titles from the same period to look out for are:

D&D brown box
Lost Caverns of Tsojconth (loose-leaf with wrap-around cover)
Ghost Tower of Inverness (loose-leaf with wrap-around cover)
Rahasia (Daystar West)
Pharaoh (Daystar West)

Those are the bigger titles. They're still worth something. There are several mid-level titles like Outdoor Geomorphs that will fetch some nice coin.

Wargames can be worth just as much money as the rpg stuff. Martial Enterprises is one of the more valuable publishers.
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"This is cool."

[oldgamer]

Auction closed at $860, buyer already paid. I had hoped it might head a little farther north, but you know what, $860 is good money for something I had not looked at for 30 years!

[tfm]

Yeah, that should probably have gone a bit higher. $860 is still great money for something you paid $5 for, though. The lower value for the high-end D&D collectible can be traced to three reasons: the economy, the competition between big spenders, and the realization by the greater collecting community that rare D&D is not rare at all. The quantity of high-end D&D collectibles has exploded over the past five years. For example, there are dozens of copies of the 1st print brown box out there when there were only supposed to be 10-20 in existence. It obvious now that there are many LTs, LCOTs, and GTs out there. It turns out that people didn't throw them away. For true rarity there are only three items that can make that claim--a Daystar West Pharaoh, a Jade Hare w/cover, and a Planescape Sketchbook, and there are several people who would argue against the later two being on the list. A few of us stopped collecting D&D cold turkey and so our money went out of the pool. I took it a bit further and got rid of most of my D&D rares some time ago. There just wasn't a sustainable interest in the community to promote the hobby. Ergo, people walk away and so prices and values go down. I was lucky enough to get my money back or make some extra.

You did mention wargames before. They're doing pretty darn well right now, especially in the $50-$100 range. Try searching the titles on ebay's completed items pages to get an idea what you could get.
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"This is cool."

[oldgamer]

I've been looking through my old wargames, and there are several I just will never play again.... I remember playing Terrible Swift Sword in college, it took every saturday night for a semester to play with 4 people, and we had to take 1 bed down to find room for the game, lol. To boot, I got my @ss kicked, the confederates were lined up, waiting for my reinforcements to arrive on board for the second day. It is -so- much more enjoyable to win a 4 month long game than it is to lose, lol. Anyway, I have a number of games to go through, plus I seemed to latch onto any miscellaneous rpg that came out, as well.

[tfm]

Speaking of wargames, do you have a copy of Chainmail?
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"This is cool."

[oldgamer]

Yeah, I had the silver pamphlet Chainmail, with the loose leaf plastic binder, can't recall the name. I have a really uneasy feeling that I've tossed that at some point, but I have boxes and boxes of games left, so maybe it is still there.

I do hope you are not about to tell me it is worth thousands of dollars, I hadn't planned on ripping my basement apart this weekend, lol.

[scribe]

Nope. Doesn't sound like a huge loss. Spare your basement and time!
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[oldgamer]

okie-dokes. I'm busy painting my mom's house right now, getting ready to sell it. Hunting for basement treasure sounds a lot more fun though, actually. I don't mind selling off my old games, all I really collect now are domain names, I own 350 or so.

The overall idea was to own the domains for a short time and resell them quickly, only, I just seem to be gathering them up and holding onto them, lol.

Anyways, once I'm done with my mom's house, it will be back to selling wargames on eBay, probably in two weeks or so.

[tfm]

If you have any questions about value, condition, etc., let us know. If we can't answer it, we know people who can.
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