Wizards of the Coast has some sample pages from the Player's Handbook up over here to look at. It should could as no surprise that the Premium books are internally going to be reproductions of the 1995 second prints with the black border covers and the revamped color interiors. The druid excerpt provides a sampling of the artwork from that edition. It's generally regarded as inferior to the 1st printing books (I agree) but it's not bad....just not as good, unfortunately.
I imagine it was a lot easier to reprint these books, as I am sure the art and layout assets were sitting around in a WotC vault somewhere, and who knows what the print-ready condition of the original 1st prints look like these days.
Either way I am looking forward to these reprints. At $50 apiece I may have to cave and order through Amazon rather than my FLGS (much as I want to support my FLGS these premium edition reprints are just too pricey to shell out full price for), but this is the edition of AD&D that I spent the most time with and found the most enjoyment with. As I've said before, my entire gaming career in the nineties was defined by AD&D 2nd edition pretty much (followed by a handful of other games like Cyberpunk 2020 and GURPS), so for me these are must-haves.
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