There's a ton of great stuff in those books. Very overlooked books I think.

The Magic of Robert Harbin certainly falls into the category of great and hard to find. Never re-printed legally and still highly desirably.

I have just managed to buy the encyclopaedia of self working card tricks by doctor wilhelm Von deusen and glen gravatt and volume 2. In volume 2 it said it only expected to sell 50 copies. However it's currently on it 6th edition. No idea on how many prints where in each edition but one could guess 50 copies. They say they did extra editions because fraudulent forged copies where being printed that where incomplete. The second encyolpdia has an index of the first book. Which is convenient.

So I can only Surmise that the information given to my friend was incorrect.

First of all this link is interesting http://cardopolis.blogspot.co.uk/2002_08_01_archive.html

Secondly I have compared my version of book with a friends and their is a lot of different tricks some added and some removed so each edition must have been altered. I have no way of working out which mine is but believe my first is a first edition. Referring to only 11 copies