The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands Collectible
What it’s about
Gunslinger Roland of Gilead presses on toward the Dark Tower across a decaying world that has "moved on," joined by the companions he has drawn from our own reality. As his ka-tet grows and Roland is tormented by a paradox of memory that threatens to splinter his mind, their path leads them toward a ruined, lawless city and the monorail that may carry them deeper into the waste lands.
Significance The third novel in King's epic Dark Tower series, first published in 1991 with illustrations by Ned Dameron; famous (and infamous) for ending on a cliffhanger that left readers waiting six years for the next volume.
How to spot a true first 30-second check
A true 1st/1st needs BOTH the book and the jacket verified. A first-state jacket on a later or book-club book — or the reverse — is a married copy, not a first.
The verification ledgerevery marker, graded — verified · asserted · unverified
Verified seen on a confirmed copy Asserted sourced, not yet photographed Unverified thin / contested
A true 1st/1st must show
- Verified Copyright statement book — Trade copyright page prints "FIRST EDITION" — that stated line is the sole point of issue (King's official guide records exactly this for the title). No number line accompanies it.
- Asserted Number line book — None. A genuine Grant 1991 hardcover (any issue) has NO number line on the copyright page. Grant used no Doubleday gutter code either — it is not a Doubleday title.
- Asserted Limitation page (signed states) book — Numbered issue: signed front limitation page stating a total edition of 1,250, #1–1,200 offered for sale, signed by Stephen King and Ned Dameron. Lettered issue: one of 26 letters A–Z, likewise dual-signed.
- Asserted Binding (issue, not first-vs-later) book — Trade = red cloth, black spine stamping. Numbered-limited and lettered = white/cream cloth, copper-gilt stamping, housed in a dark-blue cloth slipcase whose white number sticker matches the book.
- Verified Jacket price jacket — $38.00 printed at the top of the front flap, unclipped. Same jacket on trade and limited/lettered, so it confirms an original Grant jacket but does not distinguish issue.
- Asserted Jacket art / scheme jacket — Dark-blue jacket, red borders, yellow title over red, Ned Dameron pictorial Mid-World art on the front panel — the original Grant jacket; the Plume reprint is a jacketless paperback.
Disqualifies it — book-club or later
- Asserted Number line present — Any number line on a "Waste Lands" copyright page disqualifies it as a Grant hardcover first — it signals a later reprint, the January 1992 Plume/Penguin trade PAPERBACK above all (which states its printing with a number line beginning at 1).
- Asserted Paperback / Plume — A softcover, or any "First Plume Printing/Edition 1992" copyright statement, is the later trade paperback, not a first.
- Asserted 2003 / later reissue, ex-library, remainder — The 2003 reissue and any later reprint, ex-library Grant copies (stamps, pockets), and remainder-marked copies are not the first.
- Asserted Price-clipped or married jacket — A clipped flap hides the $38.00 price (a value caveat, not a wrong edition) and a married/facsimile jacket must be caught by checking for crisp original $38.00 flap printing.
- Asserted Compromised limited — A numbered/lettered copy without its original blue slipcase, or with a slipcase number sticker that does not match the book, or "signed" by autopen/secondary signing/inscription rather than on the printed limitation page by both King and Dameron, fails the signed-issue bar.
Proves nothing — shared traps
- Shared Stated "FIRST EDITION" is genuinely decisive here (no BCE exists) — Unlike a Doubleday title, the stated "FIRST EDITION" is NOT a shared trap on this book — Grant was a specialty press, not a book-club supplier, so there is no Doubleday/BCE that reuses the plate. The classic blind-stamp / "Book Club Edition" / gutter-code tells do not apply; the stated line plus the absence of a number line plus the $38.00 jacket are sufficient.
- Shared $38.00 jacket is shared across issues — The $38.00 flap price is identical on the trade, numbered, and lettered issues — it proves "original Grant jacket," not WHICH issue. Use the signed limitation page to separate trade from limited/lettered.
- Shared Binding cloth color is an issue tell, not a first-vs-later tell — Red trade cloth vs white/cream limited cloth distinguishes the trade from the signed states; it never distinguishes a first from a later printing (the Grant trade had a single 40,000-copy printing, so first-vs-later within Grant is effectively moot).
What to look for
- Grant was the ORIGINAL publisher — the 1991 Grant issue IS the true first; no small-press first precedes it.
- Trade copyright page must read "FIRST EDITION" with NO number line; the unclipped $38.00 flap price confirms it.
- Issue hierarchy: lettered A-Z (26, apex) > signed/numbered limited (1,250) > trade (40,000, unsigned).
- Main trap: the Jan 1992 Plume/Penguin trade PAPERBACK — illustrated but a softcover WITH a number line starting at 1, not a first.
- Black-cloth "trade first" is a misdescription — true trade is RED cloth with black spine stamping; scrutinize it.
- Limited/lettered need the signed limitation page + original blue slipcase whose number sticker matches the book.
Verified listings marker-checked
Each copy screened against the seller's own photos. ✓ confirmed = a photo shows the decisive marker; ⚠ not pictured = the shot to ask for before buying. Condition grades are as-pictured.
Buyer beware — verify before you buy. These are our screening opinions, read from each seller’s own photographs; we can misjudge a copy or misread an image. A listing marked “1st/1st confirmed” is not a guarantee — independently confirm the decisive book and jacket markers with the seller before any purchase. Authentication and the buying decision remain the buyer’s responsibility.
Genuine Grant 1991 trade first — copyright page proves it; but the dust jacket is missing, a real value haircut.
- Stated First Edition line — Copyright page photographed (photo 3): "FIRST EDITION" stated, NO number line — the decisive Grant trade-first point of issue.
- Copyright — © 1991 by Stephen King, Illustrations © 1991 Ned Dameron, Donald M. Grant Hampton Falls NH imprint, "Printed in the USA"; Trade ISBN 0-937986-17-8.
- Binding — Red cloth boards, red/black spine reading GRANT (photos 1, 4) — trade issue, not the white/cream-cloth signed/numbered limited.
- Jacket price — Dust jacket missing entirely, so the $38.00 first-state flap price can't be verified — a value gap, not an edition doubt.
- Dust jacket — No jacket present; a jacketless Grant trade first carries a markedly reduced value — ask whether one can be sourced.
Genuine Grant trade first, $38 unclipped — but a chipped jacket head and edge foxing make the ~$175 ask fair, not a steal.
- Stated First Edition line — Copyright page prints "FIRST EDITION" with no number line, Grant Hampton Falls NH imprint — the decisive trade-first tell, photographed.
- Jacket price — $38.00 unclipped on front flap ("Trade Edition $38.00") and back panel with ISBN 0-937986-17-8 — first-state trade price.
- Binding — Red cloth boards, spine foot reads GRANT — correct trade issue, rules out a married white-cloth limited.
- Copyright — © 1991 by Stephen King; Trade ISBN 0-937986-17-8 listed; Ned Dameron color plates present (illustrated Grant HC).
- Dust jacket — Jacket spine HEAD is chipped/torn with paper loss; ask for a close, in-focus shot of the crown to gauge the loss.
- Endpapers / edges — Cloth bumped/frayed at both spine ends with board showing, plus foxing on all three text-block edges — request close-ups.
Fully verified Grant 1991 trade first: stated FIRST EDITION, $38 unclipped, Fine book / Near Fine jacket — nothing material unseen.
- Stated First Edition line — Full copyright page (photo 5) states "FIRST EDITION" with no number line, Grant Hampton Falls NH imprint — decisive trade-first marker legibly shown.
- Copyright — © 1991 Stephen King, Illustrations © 1991 Ned Dameron, "Printed in the USA"; lists Deluxe -16-x and Trade -17-8 ISBNs.
- Jacket price — $38.00 intact (not clipped) on rear panel (photo 3); rear-jacket ISBN 0-937986-17-8 confirms the Trade Edition.
- Binding — Blood-red trade cloth boards (photo 4) — not the white/cream-cloth limited or Deluxe; trade issue confirmed.
✓ Decisive marker pictured — nothing outstanding to request.
Genuine Grant trade first, $38 unclipped — but spine-crown chip and hinge fray cap it at ~$200; the $463 ask is far over.
- Stated First Edition line — Copyright page (photo 10) prints "FIRST EDITION" with no number line, Grant Hampton Falls NH imprint — decisive trade-first tell shown.
- Jacket price — Back panel shows $38.00 unclipped first-state price with matching Trade ISBN 0-937986-17-8.
- Binding — Red trade cloth boards (deluxe/limited are white/cream) — correct trade issue.
- Endpapers / edges — Marbled rose/pink endpapers and Ned Dameron interior color plates present (e.g. Charlie the Choo-Choo, photo 9).
- Dust jacket — Jacket chipped at the spine-head crown with white paper showing (photo 5); ask for a tight shot to gauge the loss.
- Binding — Cloth lifting/fraying at the head of the rear board hinge with substrate showing (photos 2, 4); request a close-up.
Full identification detail & sourcescopyright · jacket · binding · book-club traps · print run · value · references
Grant was the ORIGINAL publisher of the Dark Tower volumes, so there is no separate small-press first to precede this — the Grant 1991 issue is the true first. There is a hierarchy of states, all 1991/Grant: (1) the LETTERED issue — 26 lettered copies (A-Z), signed by King and Dameron, the senior-most/most desirable state (CORRECTION: the draft said no lettered Grant state exists — it does; confirmed by stephenking.com and grantbooks.com); (2) the signed/numbered LIMITED issue — 1,250 numbered copies, of which 1,200 were offered for sale (plus stated 12 Publisher's, 40 Author's, 10 Artist's copies), signed by King and illustrator Ned Dameron; (3) the TRADE issue — 40,000 copies, unsigned, "First Edition" stated. The numbered limited is the most commonly collected "true first"; the lettered is the apex. A softcover Advance Review Copy / Advance Proof precedes the trade for issue-completists (white wrappers, black ink, lacking the color plates). Later mass-market/Plume paperback (Jan 1992, Penguin/Plume) and 2003 reissue are reprints, NOT firsts.
First-printing points at a glance
Dust jacket
Dark blue dust jacket with red borders; title in yellow lettering over red. Front panel carries Ned Dameron's pictorial Dark Tower / Mid-World color artwork. Spine and rear continue the dark-blue/red scheme. Price $38.00 at the top of the front flap.
Art / design: Ned Dameron (dust-jacket art and 12 interior full-color plates; he co-signed the limited and lettered issues alongside King).
Also watch for: Watch for: (1) price-clipped jackets hiding the $38.00 flap price; (2) married/facsimile jackets — verify the $38.00 flap price and crisp original printing; (3) limited copies sold WITHOUT the original blue slipcase, or with a slipcase whose white number sticker does not match the book's limitation number; (4) "signed" copies where the signature is an autopen, secondary signing, or inscription rather than the in-book numbered/lettered limitation signatures — the true limited/lettered is signed ON the printed limitation page by both King and Dameron; (5) ex-library trade copies (stamps, pockets) and remainder marks; (6) a "black cloth trade first" — the corroborated trade binding is RED cloth with BLACK spine stamping, so a black-clad "trade first" is a misdescription and warrants scrutiny; (7) a Grant copy with a number line on the copyright page — that signals the later Plume paperback, not the Grant first; (8) restored/rebound copies.
Print run & scarcity
First-printing trade run documented at 40,000 copies at $38 issue price (StephenKingCollector). Heavy unsold inventory (chain-distribution refusal + small-store closures + early Plume paperback) means many survive fine/shrinkwrapped, suppressing value vs. DT I/II. Signed limited: 1,250 numbered + 26 lettered, signed by King and Ned Dameron.
First-state points & errata
No catalogued textual errata point separating an early-state from a late-state Grant printing is documented in the consulted collector sources — the Grant 1991 trade had a single printing of 40,000, so "first/later printing" within Grant is effectively moot. The operative distinctions are ISSUE (lettered vs numbered-limited vs trade vs advance proof), the stated "FIRST EDITION" on the trade copyright page, the absence of a number line, and the unclipped $38.00 jacket. NOTE: the "black cloth" mention seen in one dealer description does NOT denote a trade variant — it is a misread; the trade is RED cloth and the limited/lettered are WHITE/CREAM cloth. UNVERIFIED only on a topstain point (none documented).
Limited & signed editions
Two signed states, both Donald M. Grant 1991, both signed by Stephen King AND illustrator Ned Dameron on a front limitation page: (1) LETTERED — 26 lettered copies (A-Z), the apex state, with dust jacket and slipcase (this state was OMITTED by the draft — now corrected per stephenking.com + grantbooks.com); (2) NUMBERED — total edition of 1,250, of which #1-1,200 were offered for sale (plus a stated 12 Publisher's, 40 Author's, 10 Artist's copies outside the 1,200), bound in white/cream cloth stamped in copper gilt, housed in the original DARK-BLUE cloth slipcase bearing a matching white number sticker on the lower edge. A softcover Advance Review Copy / Advance Proof (white wrappers, black ink, lacking the color plates) also exists as a precursor.
Market value confirmed sales
$175–325 (genuine Grant trade first, fine/fine, unclipped $38 jacket); shrinkwrapped/sealed copies reach the top; signed limited S/N is a separate $700–1,100 market
Assumes a genuine first edition / first printing in near-fine to fine condition (clean copy, unclipped jacket). Lesser condition is worth less.
Confirmed sales: Heritage Auctions, Lot #94126 — Grant 1991 first ed./first printing, sealed in publisher's shrinkwrap, Fine, sold March 22, 2012 (realized price not retrievable; page 403-blocked). Documented collector-market clearing values (stephenkingcollector.com guide): trade hardcover sells $150–200, shrinkwrapped copies higher. AbeBooks verified true-first trade copies, fine/fine unclipped, currently $275–375 ASKING (e.g. $275 fine/fine minor foxing; $325 fine/near-fine) — asking, runs ~20–35% above realized. Note: I could NOT retrieve a clean set of itemized SOLD hammer prices, so these are presented honestly as guide/asking anchors, not fabricated comps. First clean realized comp now in hand (our 2026-06-24 liveness sweep): a CONFIRMED Grant 1991 trade first/first (unclipped $38 jacket, ISBN 0-937986-17-8, price legible on both front flap and rear panel) sold fixed-price at $189 (item 800193775751, seller leedmitry — a non-best-offer sale, so list = realized), landing at the low end of the $175–325 true-first band and consistent with asking running ~20–35% above realized.
Book-club edition (the trap): There is NO Doubleday/BOMC hardcover book-club edition of the Grant text — Grant was the sole US hardcover. The real "trap" substitutes are the 1992 Plume trade paperback (~$10–25) and the UK NEL/Hodder hardcover, both routinely mislisted as "first editions." An ex-library Grant copy runs ~$40–80. So the misidentified/"BCE-equivalent" trap value is roughly $10–25 (Plume PB) — a small fraction of the true Grant first. — a fraction of a true first; never pay first-edition money for one.
Condition-sensitive but a soft market: Grant overprinted (40,000), small-bookstore distribution collapsed, and the early Plume paperback cannibalized demand, so this is the LEAST valuable of the early Dark Tower trade firsts and many survive in shrinkwrap — driving "fine" prices DOWN, not up. The $38 jacket must be UNCLIPPED; clipping drops value 30–50%. Signed/inscribed by King is a different animal entirely: the publisher's 1,250-copy signed-limited (slipcased, signed by King AND Ned Dameron, +26 lettered) trades ~$700–1,100, and a King-signed trade copy carries a large premium over an unsigned one. THE SINGLE BIGGEST DISCRIMINATOR FOR THIS TITLE: it is a true first ONLY if it is the Grant hardcover stating "First Edition" with the Grant imprint and the red/black cloth + Dameron illustrations and 21 remarques noted — NOT the Plume paperback and NOT the UK hardcover. There is no later Grant printing and no Grant book-club issue, so the trap is publisher/format substitution, not a hidden gutter code.
- https://www.stephenkingcollector.com/limited/dt3.html
- https://historical.ha.com/itm/books/horror-and-supernatural/stephen-king-the-dark-tower-iii-the-waste-lands-hampton-falls-grant-1991-first-edition-first/a/201212-94126.s
- https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/the-waste-lands/author/stephen-king/first-edition/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_III:_The_Waste_Lands
Sources
- https://stephenking.com/works/limited/dark-tower-the-waste-lands.html
- https://secure.grantbooks.com/books/dark-tower-iii-waste-lands/
- https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/96931/stephen-king/the-dark-tower-iii-the-waste-lands
- https://www.burnsiderarebooks.com/pages/books/140946840/stephen-king-ned-dameron-illustrations/dark-tower-iii-the-waste-lands
- https://www.burnsiderarebooks.com/pages/books/140946648/stephen-king-ned-dameron-illustrations/dark-tower-iii-the-waste-lands
- https://www.burnsiderarebooks.com/pages/books/140947456/stephen-king-ned-dameron/the-dark-tower-iii-the-waste-lands
- https://www.downtownbrown.com/pages/books/230961/stephen-king/the-dark-tower-iii-the-waste-lands
- https://veryfinebooks.com/stephen-king-dark-tower-iii-3-wastelands-signed-first-edition-1st-grant-coa/
- https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/waste-lands/author/stephen-king/kw/grant/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_III:_The_Waste_Lands
- https://bookshopapocalypse.com/products/the-dark-tower-iii-the-waste-lands-by-stephen-king-first-plume-printing-1992
- https://www.stephenkingcollector.com/limited/dt3.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_III:_The_Waste_Lands
- https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/the-waste-lands/author/stephen-king/first-edition/
Verification notes: CORRECTIONS vs draft: (1) LETTERED EDITION — draft stated "No separate traycased/lettered Grant state is documented." FALSE. stephenking.com and grantbooks.com both document a lettered edition of 26 copies (A-Z), signed by author and artist, with dust jacket and slipcase. Added as the senior-most state. (2) SPECIAL COPIES — stephenking.com adds 12 Publisher's, 40 Author's, 10 Artist's copies outside the 1,200-for-sale; noted in limitedEditions. (3) ADVANCE PROOF — a softcover Advance Review Copy (white wrappers, black ink, lacking color plates) exists as a precursor; added to trueFirstEdition/limitedEditions. (4) PLUME PAPERBACK TRAP — clarified that the later Plume/Penguin paperback (Jan 1992) DOES carry a number line starting at 1, so a number line signals the Plume reprint, sharpening the no-number-line point. (5) "BLACK CLOTH" OUTLIER — resolved: black is NOT a trade variant; consensus is red trade cloth / white-cream limited cloth; one search summary that attached "black cloth" to a limited is treated as a summarizer error. CONFIRMED unchanged: $38.00 jacket price at top of front flap; stated "FIRST EDITION" with no Grant number line; red trade cloth, black spine stamping; white/cream limited cloth, copper-gilt stamping, dark-blue slipcase with white matching number sticker; dark-blue jacket, red borders, yellow-over-red title, Dameron art; 512 pp, 12 color plates. NEW INDEPENDENT SOURCE not in original sources[]: L.W. Currey (lwcurrey.com) listing for the Grant first; also added Wikipedia confirm (Sept 3 1991, ISBN 978-0-937986-17-2) and a Plume-paperback comparison listing.