The Collector's Trove Presents: A New Massive Auction
Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 10:48AM Welcome to our newest auction!
Finally! A new auction! We have been so incredibly busy getting ready for Dragon Days™ Fantasy Festival on October 4th and 5th in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the birthplace of D&D, that we have not had a lot of time to get to auction prep but we are finally done!
We even have a few special items where the proceeds will go toward the Gygax Memorial Fund Inc., to build a memorial to Gary Gygax in his hometown of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. These items include: a shrink-wrapped white boxed edition of D&D, a Gary Con VII/VIII Challenge Coin, a Birthplace of D&D 50th Anniversary Keepsake, and a 1st day of issue set of Dungeons & Dragons postage stamps with proof of purchase from 8/1/2024 from the US Post Office in Lake Geneva! What a cool set of collectibles!
The main auction includes over 400 items in 378 lots from several private collections, some of these originally purchased from the collections of TSR game designers and former employees, Jim Ward and John Rateliff! Featured items include a selection of incredible items from the collection of David Wesely, creator of Braunstein which would influence Dave Arneson to create Blackmoor which lead to Gary Gygax collaborating on Dungeons & Dragons!
Among the items are a huge run of incredibly rare fanzines, including issues of International Wargamer Monthly produced by Gary Gygax's wargame club the IFW. Also included are over 100 rare war games from the 1960s through the 80s! The latter includes card games, board games, and miniatures rules! Among them is a beautiful 1st print Guidon Games copy of Chainmail by Gary Gygax.
The special items for the auction include comp copies and ephemera from various wargame clubs, publishing companies, and miniature manufacturers, including: catalogs, order forms, business cards, stationary, and other cool memorabilia! There will even be a D&D white boxed set still in SHRINK!
The featured items from the David Wesely collection is a set of Corner of the Table and Corner of the Table Top newsletters from the MMSA copyright archive--the largest collection to ever be sold at public auction! It includes the very first issue and issues featuring the Blackmoor Rumor Monger, a campaign journal of the happenings in the world's first role-playing game run by Dave Arneson. There are also letters from IFW members, including a letter from Gary Gygax to one of Dave Arneson's players, Phil Grant, aka, King of the Elves from the original Blackmoor campaign!
Begins: Sunday, September 7th, 2025
Ends: Sunday, September 14th, 2025
Here is the link to place your bids:
The Collector's Trove eBay Auctions
(Note: Items will start listing at 5:00 pm CST/MEX in 1 minute increments and will all be live by 11:45 pm.)