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Young People's Library Format 3 (Series 202)
This common book comes up for sale on Ebay and other book search services frequently. Without a dust jacket a buyer should not spend more than $15.
Here is an interesting, incorrect and delusional ad.
1897 THROUGH the LOOKING GLASS [ ALICE ], ALTEMUS COLOR
SCARCE FIRST PRINTING, ALL 4 COLOR PLATES, VERY NICE!
US $167.50
CARROLL'S CLASSIC SEQUEL to ALICE'S ADVENTURES in WONDERLAND, Published by Altemus (Philadelphia), with Publication date of 1897 on Two Color Title Page.
Here is the reality.
The first Altemus edition was published in 1895. A copy is seen below.
The copy shown by the seller is part of the 3rd format of the Young People's Library. It was published at the earliest in 1902. See: http://henryaltemus.com/series/series202F3.htm
By the time this copy was published, Altemus had printed this title in Formats 1 and 2 of the Young People's Library as well as in at least 10 other series. See: http://henryaltemus.com/search/titlesearch.php
This dealer has been sent emails before about its his mischaracterization of Altemus books. This has been to no avail.
Thus what we have here is an incorrect claim about the date of the book's publication, an error about which edition it is and gross overpricing. It is absolutely not anywhere close to a "first printing".
By the way, the seller includes this in its ad: "In Early (Pre-1935) First Editions, subsequent Impressions or Printings are referred to as "edition". These are still the FIRST EDITION, numbered Impression."
The difficulty with this claim is that most of the earlier editions of this title published by Altemus have different covers and title pages. With this guy's definition of first editions every subsequent printing would be a first edition of some type. There would never be a second edition, etc.
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