Leatherette cults of runequest

[Tupper]

Quick question for American leatherette fans.

I recently took advantage of the sale on leatherette books to buy a bunch of books, including Lightbringers and Earth Goddesses (from the Australian warehouse).  It seems there'd been a bit of a manufacturing issue with these books, in that the plastic wrapping around the books had bonded with the gold leaf on the covers, so that when the wrapping is removed, much of the leaf comes off as well.  Chaosium has been kind enough to ship me another copy of both of the books, but sadly, they had the same problem. 

I'm curious as to whether people who've ordered the books from the US have had the same problem?  If not, it might be worth me re-ordering from the US store.  Shipping from the US is fairly vicious to Australasia, so I'm cautious about doing so without a signal that the US warehouse books don't have this defect.  I definitely don't begrudge Chaosium the money, as the current sale is very generous (and they were good to reship to me) but I'd hate to waste the postage.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Brian Duguid]

I bought my leatherettes from the UK warehouse, but these are basically all from the same source, printed in Poland. The first three volumes of the Cults series all have "gold leaf" that rubs off a bit too easily, although I didn't have the issue you had with bonding to the shrinkwrap. The fourth and fifth books seem to have fixed the problem, with a tougher and brighter looking gold.

 

[Tupper]

Thanks Brian.

Hmm... The copy of The Lunar Way also had wrinkled wrap, and a *little* leaf came off, but nothing you'd notice on the book itself. So it sounds like the early books have weaker leaf, and then the long trip from Poland to the antipodes did something to the wrap (possibly passing through the tropics?). The UK is much closer to Poland, so the wrap was okay for that shorter trip. 

I guess the question becomes whether the US was near enough to Poland to avoid the wrap acting up.

[Ali the Helering]

I saw this and the title automatically took me to Rule 34....

[Shiningbrow]

On 11/2/2024 at 8:06 AM, Tupper said:

I guess the question becomes whether the US was near enough to Poland to avoid the wrap acting up.

The other question is - will Chaosium change publishers if this is something that keeps happening??? I'd be pretty pissed if I forked out a stack of cash to then have the front cover on a brand new book start coming to pieces... AND I'd be wondering what else is going to go wrong a few months down the road...