Q: Hello there Sir, so I’m a fairly novice book collector and recently my uncle passed and left me this beautiful Altemus book of Weird Tales. It looks like one of the later series of reprints but the 1895 copyright page confused me. Is that because when they reprinted they reprint everything including the original copyright page? Anyways any help identifying would be appreciated, thanks!

A: This book was published in 1899 as part of the Sanspareil Series. It originally came with a dust jacket, an example of which is shown. All the books in this series are reprints.

The 1895 on the Altemus copyright page indicates either when this title was first published by Altemus or when this edition was first published by Altemus.

Unfortunately this can make it difficult to know what you have in terms of whether your book is a reprint or an actual first edition.
The publisher’s series’ titles that Altemus published are all reprints. This includes your book.