Having made the decision to purchase all Wisdens for the years in which I have lived and breathed, I stand at the junction on several decisions directional, financial, and aesthetic. Do I collect from the end or the beginning or at both ends and work towards the middle? Do I go for prize one-offs like the volume I saw for sale this morning - a 1958 hardback in excellent nick with good type coloring on the spine and pristine pages without spotting or waving, for a very reasonable 65 pounds - or does one seek out oddlots and incomplete collections?
Truthfully I have very humble aspirations as a collector, wishing as I do only to covet a handful of decades. Bona fide collecteurs on the other hand will succumb to the more exotic thrillingly. Their world is an altogether different place from the one I inhabit. Collectors live in a world of misty arcaniana: of end papers, boards, leather reprints, Willow editions, replacement dustcovers (with option of traditional Wisden cover art or the recently introduced photographic covers). It's a fascinating business with its own special allure.
Here's what is called the Billings edition - a reprint that is itself a collectors item:
Should anyone care to gift me an issue, anything from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s would do quite nicely!
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