APG reports that 200 copies were printed, quoting Chapel Hill Rare Books catalog 11/94. Ken Lopez, in his catalog 12/94, speculates that 400 copies were printed but only 200 were signed by McCarthy. In a note held in his collection at the University of Texas, San Marcos, Howard Woolmer reports that a Knopf employee told them hat there were 500 copies of it. Cormac McCarthy told him that he had signed “quite a few” copies. So, like Ken Lopez, Woolmer suspects that McCarthy balked at signing all of them. Against these theories, others have observed that no unsigned copies have ever surfaced the market. Gary Fisketjon, McCarthy editor at Knopf at the time, in an email told me: “I believe we made 125 copies of this boxed edition, and Cormac would’ve signed them all”. Evaluating by the number of copies appeared on the market, I guess that this advance edition was printed and signed in a number between 125 and 200 copies.

COLLECTING TOPICS:this proof is not uncommon with 17 copies listed by the Rare Book Hub at auction. It is worth to note that the price has not skyrocketed as did for other McCarthy’s items: prices went from $805 for a copy sold in 2006 to $688 and 650 for copies auctioned respectively in 2023 and 2024. By August,2025, Abebooks listed 8 copies with prices in a range of $895-1437. The only challenge here is finding a copy in a true nice example of the fragile box.