Resto Help?

[LordRahl]

I just bought a T.T.A. 50 that I think may have had some restoration done on it. I'm not all that good in spotting resto so I'm hoping some of you can help. On the top edge the cover is flush with the pages, no overhang whatsoever. I don't think I've seen an early Silver book without a cover overhang. Do they all have it or just the majority. Also the book has 4 staples. Two that just hold the pages together and two more that hold the cover and pages. I've seen that once before and it was on a restored book. There is also one spine stress that falls on black ink that looks like it should have broken color but doesn't. I've looked at it under a black light and can't tell if it's been touched up. I know black color touch is the toughest to detect. If I look at it under magnification what are the telltale signs that it has color touch?

 

[hammer-migration]

There won't be ANY upper edge overhang whatsoever on a S.A. Marvel IF the cover has shifted down due to loose paper around the staples. IF the staples are tightly affixed with no projection tears causing the cover to shift UPWARD, that's the first red flag to the top edge being trimmed.

 

Mark Wilson had a Spiderman 14 that he offered on Ebay that was CGC blue-topped either a 9.0 or 9.2 (almost positive that it was a 9.2 blue) that had an EXTRA set of staples on the interior. It was noted on the label "manufactured with extra internal set of staples".

 

Under enough magnification, 25X with an adequate wide range light source, as much as 50X with a narrow band, weak light source, the surface of the cover (even with gloss MOSTLY intact) of a FIBROUS stress fracture (or crease, break, etc....anything that causes flaking in the general vicinity) will have WHITE (actually cream) fibres standing up three dimensionally off the cover. IF that area is NOT color touched, the fibres criss-crossing the FLAKED stress (or area that appears to be creased or broken) will be viewed as WHITE, even on a jet black area. If these fibres crisscrossing a break or fissure are NOT white but have a distinct COLOR, an attempt has been made to color touch.

Under enough power, the dot pattern or benday matrix of the amalgam of colors that make up a specific hue on the front cover appear as large as baseballs. Almost three dimensional (about 75 to 100 power with an adequate light source). The fibres crisscrossing abrased areas appear, at that type of magnification, like WHITE (creamy white) ROPES. It is VERY easy to determine color touch by direct examination of these fibres at areas that are suspect and a FAR better indicator of color touch than black light and the amount of fluorescing which can and does yield false positives (AND false negatives) dependent upon the type, the composition of ink or color material applied.

[LordRahl]

Great info. Thanks Hammer. There is no looseness around the staples at all, so I don't think the cover could have shifted down. Probably trimmed, oh well.

[PovertyRow]

Hammer! That was a GREAT dissertation. I have copy/pasted it to my hard drive. Really good info. I love seeing things broken down to the fiber level. Amazing!

[fantastic_four]

I'm still trying to determine what's the best magnification tool to use. Tracey Heft told me he uses a 10x magnification lens. It looks from their ads like CGC uses a stereoscope:

 

[seank]

I don't think that guy in the photo is looking for defects, I think he's checking out some assets...