Distributor Ink Stains

[Ze-man]

Here's an example of what I was reffering to. As you can see, it literally is all over the top and dripping front and back. It bleeds only slightly, though, into the inner pages.

 

 

 

Wow, talk about marking your territory. That's extreme!.

 

 

Are the other sprayed books you have in similar condition(book wise) Because in mid grade I dont see it killing the book value wise, just another of many flaws present.

 

[HouseofComics.Com]

I"m not sure that book is sprayed. It looks more like a dist. return copy and was marked well after the printing process. A lot of the Bakertowne books look like that and those are dist. return books.

[Ze-man]

I"m not sure that book is sprayed. It looks more like a dist. return copy and was marked well after the printing process. A lot of the Bakertowne books look like that and those are dist. return books.

 

Just to be clear, I meant sprayed after production from the top down, by a heavy handed spray can(dist.) artist.

 

I think we are talking about the same thing, I think.

 

 

 

[skypinkblu]

I"m not sure that book is sprayed. It looks more like a dist. return copy and was marked well after the printing process. A lot of the Bakertowne books look like that and those are dist. return books.

 

Yup, that looks like it was from Bakerstowne...he was the seller who sold all the books from the warehouse.

There was an old warehouse (distribution center) in Long Island, with books going back to the 40's. They sent books to mostly Candy stores, magazine shops and took returns of the ones that were not sold and gave the store owners credit.

In order to prevent people from reselling the returns...

They marked the returns in a number of different ways.

1. stripped the titles off

2. stripped front covers off

3. drowned them in purple ink...some of the books that were in that purple ink, were solid purple on the backs. Very heavy spray. Sometimes they were sprayed in bundles.

I had thousands of the coverless books, at one time, I used to drive out and buy books when he was listing them on Ebay.

Some of the books I have have nothing wrong at all..they escaped damage, some were still in the original brown bag packing, some had strings tied around them and then were dipped in ink, and some were just in boxes with no damage. ...some had moisture damage from the warehouse. One thing you will notice with books from that find is almost all of them, have great color, and gloss, they were in the dark for years...pages are usually light, too.

What was interesting, is most of these books, used to be scarce, they were the poor books no one wanted, so they were returned:)

[HouseofComics.Com]

Just to be clear, I meant sprayed after production from the top down, by a heavy handed spray can(dist.) artist.

 

I think we are talking about the same thing, I think.

 

I'm not quite sure if we are talking about the same thing. I'm talking about what Sharon is talking about but am not sure if you are talking about some sort of spray to mark copies for a particular dist. or if you also mean that the ink is to mark them as not for retail sale (ie, returns).

[Catman-migration]

I have an ASM #129 that I bought in the early 90's that has a similar stain. IIRC I was told at the time that the ink stain resulted from a post-production/warehouse mishap. I was under the impression that it was a one-time occurrence that happened to a batch of books, not a common practice by a distributor. I guess there are more books with this defect than I realized.

[JazzMan]

Thanks for the info, everyone. I'm not looking at these to get graded, just making sure that if I come by one that's in good shape that I don't discard a good deal or should run away from it at first sight. I have another one that I'll try to post later with even worse ink stains including a big splotch on the back cover. Interestingly enough, they are from the same era although I got them about 25 years apart from different sources as part of a lot each time.

[JazzMan]

Here's the other one I have...again not one that's CGC worthy but a cool one to own. Check out the BC BLOB.

 

 

[worldsbestcomics]

When I first read this thread, I was thinking of the distributor marking along the top of the comic that sometimes results in overspray onto the top center of the front cover [example below]. I'm not sure how CGC treats overspray but it is clear that what you have pictured is not a production issue and would be treated as a major defect.

 

[Red Hook]

Here's the other one I have...again not one that's CGC worthy but a cool one to own. Check out the BC BLOB.

 

 

 

 

Kri-keee!

[the blob]

i guess it's safe to say that the "soaked" ones are returns, which is what I always figured.

[rodan57]

I don't know if they are ... It seems like a lot of messy work to do this for every returned book. Some past warehouse finds have been "returned" (i.e., slated for illegal resale) books -- without the disfiguring ink.

 

The simpler answer might be that some distributors were clumsy and messed up the ink coding.

[skypinkblu]

I don't know if they are ... It seems like a lot of messy work to do this for every returned book. Some past warehouse finds have been "returned" (i.e., slated for illegal resale) books -- without the disfiguring ink.

 

The simpler answer might be that some distributors were clumsy and messed up the ink coding.

 

I think the method...from what I saw, was to toss the returns on the floor and spray ink over them in mass...that's why the ones on the bottom have solid purple back covers (the ink pooled) , the ones on the top have sprayed purple front covers, and the ones in-between have spot. I had dozens of books were you could see the spray droplets.

 

There were thousands of CI books, that were treated like that...

It was rather interesting...stacks and stacks and piles of CI books, many in the brown wrappers they were originally packed in... they were ripping those off, I rescued a few, I thought the wrappers were interesting.

 

Then there were books that were tied and just the edges were sprayed, and the ink just dripped, but that ink was green, not purple. The books that were sprayed, were almost all from the late 50's, earlier ones were stripped, the ones from the early 60's were mostly without front covers, so I think that the method changed over the years.

 

If I have time, I'll post some Katy Keenes this week, they looked SO good, ithey look VF or better, until you see the edges.