As all collectors know, Ladybird Books can be harder than most to accurately date.  For the most part, the only date in a vintage Ladybird Book is on the title page – and that date is the date of the publication of the first edition, not the actual edition you have in your hand.  This is one of the reasons why so many Ladybird Books are falsely described as ‘First Editions’ on the internet and even in specialist bookshops.

For more modern books (post-decimilisation) the simplest basic way to put an approximate date to a book is to use the price it was originally published at.  You can use this table below:

Price Date
2,6 Net 1965 – February 1971
2/6 Net 121/2p February 1971 – May 1971
15p 1 June 1971 – 30 April
18p 1 May 1974 – 15 June 1975
24p 16 June 1975 – 10 January 1978
30p 11 January 1978 – 24 June 1979
40p 25 June 1979 – 31 December 1980
50p 1 January 1981 – 30 June 1982
60p 1 July 1982 – 31 December 1983
70p 1 January 1984 – 31 December 1985
75p 1 January 1985 – 31 December 1986
85p 1 January 1987 – 31 December 1987
90p 1 January 1988 – 31 December 1988
99p From January 1 1989

On the other hand, once you have got your head around the basics, doing a bit of detective work can be part of the fun of collecting.  A collecting pal of mine, Andrew Brade, sent me a table that he uses to help date his books.  It uses guidelines you can find elsewhere (including in the ‘How Old is my  Book‘ section of my website) – original price, tally numbers etc.  But it has been very neatly put together and might be useful to other people out there.  He tells me he is happy for me to share it so here it is:

Click on it to enlarge!