Paid $40 for a 'classic' edition that turned out to be a photocopy mess

I grabbed what looked like a legit copy of The Great Gatsby from a flea market in Portland, thought I scored a steal. Got home and the text was blurry, some pages were sideways, and the cover was just a cheap print glued on. Turns out it's a bootleg that some seller pushed as 'vintage'. I know banned books get reprinted weird, but this was flat out trash. Has anyone else gotten burned by cheap knockoffs of challenged classics? I'm sticking to real publishers now, even if it costs more.

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john_murphy8d ago

The 1930s printing of Gatsby with the Art Deco sunburst on the cover is what most bootleggers copy, and the giveaway is always the paper quality, not the cover. Real vintage editions have that thin, slightly rough paper that feels like newsprint, and the ink sits flat on the page. Your photocopy mess probably had glossy or thick stock, which no legit publisher used back then. I checked three different flea market booths last summer and all of them had the same fake, so it's a whole circuit of sellers pushing these, not just one bad apple. Next time, flip to page 100 and look at the line spacing. If it's cramped or the margins are uneven, walk away.