Michael Whelan - "The Enchantress of World's End" by Lin Carter (DAW Books)

Roughly 25 years ago, my friend Bob Weinberg offered to sell me the original cover painting to Lin Carter's "The Enchantress of World's End", published by DAW Books in 1975. The cover art was by Michael Whelan, and was his first paperback cover assignment. This was a book in Carter's Gondwane series, which I'd read and enjoyed when I was a teenager. I thought the art was great, but I'd been buying a lot of art at the time and decided to pass on it.

The moment that Bob told me that he'd sold the painting to a mutual friend of ours, I regretted not buying it. That, of course, helped prove one of Bob's favorite maxims -- "You never regret the art you buy, you only regret the art you didn't buy." Over the course of the past 25 or so years, that mutual friend eventually sold it to another mutual friend, who then traded it to yet another mutual friend. I inquired about it from time to time, but the stars never aligned and it was never available at those times.

Earlier today, however, the stars aligned and now -- a mere 25 or so years after we should have first bought it -- it's part of our collection.