Back in the day, comic books were sold to distributors and retailers on a returnable basis, meaning they sold what they could and were able to return the unsold copies for credit. Since shipping back comics that would be destroyed anyway was cost prohibitive, retailers were allowed to strip off the covers or in many cases, just the top third or so of the cover and return those as proof of destruction, and receive full credit for the return just as if they had returned the entire book. Legally, the retailer was then obligated to destroy the remaindered copies. That probably happened in some cases, but most of the time, the retailer sold the remaindered comics at a discount. So technically, every remaindered comic book that still exists was supposed to have been destroyed and was reported to the publisher as such. That's also why most comics from the golden and silver ages have a paragraph in the indicia stating that that book was not to be sold with any part of its markings removed. It was likely a waste of ink because except for the publishers, no one really cared. If you were a kid back then, you could likely buy 2, 3 or even 4 remaindered comics for the price of 1 new comic. The retailer didn't really care how much he sold the remaindered books for, since he had already been reimbursed for them from the publisher, and in essence the remaindered comics cost him nothing, meaning that however much he sold them for was pure profit for him.