Hi all
I have been living in Amsterdam for the past 3 years and have taken the opportunity to collect Euro versions of sets and modules. I would like to thank the contributors of The Acaeum for all the hard work in detailing the American & Foreign editions of products, the foreign edition info has been extremely helpful while trying to collect foreign editions of sets, books, & modules.
While collecting UK
GW items, I have come across a bit of an anomaly regarding early UK Basic Sets. I have several copies of the UK Black Sides Extra Deep Box Basic Set (wish we had a name for this like UK Black) which is listed and detailed as the 3rd & 4th UK print. Acaeum states the UK 3rd print was released in Nov 1978(hold this thought for a moment).
About a year ago I found a USA Second Print set for sale in the UK. 1001 Box , TM Applied For, Lizard logo. The surprise came when I opened the box and inside was an F-116R UK
GW manual and a
B1 GW Module. The back of the box states: Manual, M&T set 1-3, Dungeon Geo 1-3, polyhedral dice....Naturally I thought someone had simply bought a USA second print box set and over time somehow only ended up with just the manual and the module left, stuck it in the box, and forgot about it. Fair enough. I bought it and happily wen ton my way.
Fast forward a few months, and lo and behold, here is another Second Print USA box for sale in UK. I open it up and again just an F116-R
GW manual and
B1 GW module. This got me thinking that this is either a very strange coincidence or for some reason UK players were creating these strange sets due to the fact that second print sets had no module included. So they would buy a module, stick it in the box, and years later that would be what someone like me finds.
But the more I thought about it the less sense it made that this was something that UK players were doing. If they had bought a USA second print box set, the F116-R manual would not have the
GW logo inside. To get that manual they would have had to of bought the UK Black Side set, lost the box, and decided to stash it in their USA 1001 box. The other possibility is that the F116-R UK/GW manual was sold separately at some point which would have allowed them to get the manual without purchasing a UK Black side set. This doesn't explain what happened to their USA f116-R manual that should have been in their set, precluding the need to go out and buy a UK
GW version of the same manual.
Fast forward to today, and I now have found 4 of these UK/USA mishmash sets. All 4 had just the UK F116-R manual and a copy of
B1 module. 1 set had a set of original dice, but I dont know if they came with the set or were simply tossed in the box later on(my guess is that the came with the sets).
So, as a math guy, the idea that 4 individuals all went through the pains to create these usa/uk sets by buying a USA box set and then replacing items with their UK counterparts seems very unlikely. Thus a logical conclusion is that at some point these mishmash sets were available for purchase in the UK. The came with only a F116-R manual,
B1 GW module, and dice. There may or may not have been M&T and/or Dungeon Geo set 1-3 in them(I have gotten UK Black Side sets with M&T and Geo sets inside.
The next questions are when/why were these sets available? USA 2nd print sets were released Jan 1978. Third Print May 1978. The difference being the third print do not have the TM applied for wording on the box. As stated above, UK 3rd print(Black Side) was released Nov 1978(roughly same time as USA 4th print).
This mishmash set I described must have been released BEFORE the UK Black Side set. Once they had produced the UK Black Side set, there would be no reason to ship/sell USA versions of the set in UK. Had the mishmash set been produce after UK Black Side, it is very unlikely that TSR would have used 2nd print USA boxes. They simply would have used USA 4th print boxes which they had in the millions.
Thus my theory is that TSR wanted to sell basic sets in the UK before the UK Black Side set was ready for retail. Prior to UK Black Side, the UK basic set was simply a 64 page manual sold by itself. There was no D&D set you could buy in the UK. Possibly due to the rising sales and popularity, TSR decided they could wait and lose 6 months or so of sales in the UK while waiting on this new unique UK Black Side version, so they took what they had at the time and made some "bridge" sets. These sets used the remaining 2nd print box inventory TSR had(the started printing usa 3rd print just a few months after usa 2nd print) due to the update on the TM info on box front. The didnt want to ship any more 2nd print boxes in usa when they had 3rd print boxes, so the remaining 2nd print boxes were shipped to UK. In UK they added the fresh new F116-R UK
GW manual and
B1 GW module, threw in some dice(maybe M&T and or
Geos), and this was the first UK basic set for sale.
A few months later the UK Black Side box was ready, and the rest of history played out as we know it. But lost in time was this UK 2.5 Mishmash set which maybe a few hundred or thousand people in UK bought, stuffed in a closet, and then sold on years later. If you keep an eye on Ebay UK, I think you would find the rare sold listing and/or the occasional new listing showing a USA 1001 2nd print box for sale, with the insides being the f116-R
GW and
B1 GW module.
If anyone has info on such a set, or perhaps hidden amongst the many threads someone has described something similar in the past, I would love to hear your thoughts. There is the distinct, albeit
imo remote, chance these sets I found were simply the result of UK players building their own box sets. However I think it unlikely and would be interested in any thought or evidence proving or disproving my theory of this UK Basic Set 2.5.
Happy Gaming & Stay Healthy!
