"...the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to..."

What You Want

What You Might Get [yikes!]

Table of Faults

Cover Fading

The image at the bottom is the inside of the cover, showing what the outside's color was before fading. Fading is caused by both natural and artificial light; combine that with the accumulation of years of grimy dust (and a bit of browning caused by the acid content of the card stock over time), and you get the color you see on the top image.

Most LBB collectors are used to fading, and consider fade-free covers to be a bonus.The more intense uniform blue of the reference cover at the top of the page (What You Want) is unusual; that booklet was probably stored in a box out of the light from the day it was bound.

Cover Browning

Sometimes fading happens from the outside edge in -- the color in the center remains strong, while the color at the edges disappears. This can happen because of the way the acid content in the card stock works its sick magic browning out everything, or because another smaller object covered the center, preventing the fading effects of natural or artificial light.

You'll also see fading & browning to other than blue covers, as in the yellow cover you see here. Again, the color change is happening from the edges in, with the most extreme changes seen at the top and inside edge.

Browning also happens to internal pages.

Cover Rubbing

Sometimes a cover gets rubbed and some of the text disappears. LBB #1117, shown here, has had its number rubbed out. This is a pretty major fault to most folks -- any loss of text is considered pretty serious.

 

 

When light rubbing happens over all the text on the cover, the booklet takes on a generally faded appearance you can only describe as "old-looking" like you see here in LBB #687.

Cover Staining

Cover staining can be slight, as in the small brown stains in the top image called "foxing." Foxing is related to the acid content of the card stock; one theory suggest it's also related to microorganisms in the paper. Most collectors consider light cover foxing to be an annoyance, but an acceptable one. But sometimes you find major stains like the ones you see in the bottom image -- the card stock used for the covers makes excellent blotting paper.

 

 

 

 

 

Back cover stains are generally considered less a problem than front cover stains, but the monstrous mess of the bottom image would preclude the inclusion of that booklet from any serious collection unless the title were extremely rare. Those uncoated card stock covers were really absorbent!

 

Cover Gunk

No matter where they appear, stains that consist of material build up above the surface of the paper (caked on stuff) or that eat into the paper are the most worrisome. Be sure to isolate pieces with grungy stains from the rest of your collection. If the gunk is caused by mold and the mold is still alive, it will spread to other pieces. If the gunk is some other organic material, it can stain another booklet that comes in contact with it.

At any rate, grungy stains are certainly among the most ugly. If you must keep these booklets, store them in mylar sleeves.

Cover Chips

A chip is a piece of missing material. Sometimes pieces get torn off by accident but more often pieces go missing because the paper has dried out. When this happens, the paper becomes brittle and easily fractures. Chipping is the result.

Folded corners (dogears) are especially susceptible to chipping along the creases.

Cover Tears

Cover tears are annoying puppies; they have a tendency to extend themselves and in some cases result in missing pieces.

 

 

One solution is to mend them with acid free archival tape (never scotch tape which dries out and stains the paper). Some collectors object to such mending, while others consider it perfectly acceptable if done right.

 

Taping covers where the front and back sections have become detached can be very difficult -- and at times disastrous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The worst tears are those that result in missing paper with no hope of an aesthetic solution, as in the bottom illustration to the left. One shudders.

Cover Mottling

The mottled appearance of this cover is the result of parts of the finish disappearing. I have no idea what makes it happen.

Cover Writing & Stamps

Some folks hate writing or stamping of any kind on a cover.

I personally have little problem with name stamps at the bottom of the cover (although I'd rather see it inside the front cover rather than out side).

 

 

 

But scribbling is always a problem. The example here is kind of silly -- the owner just rewrote what was already there!

Pencil writing isn't nearly as bad as ink writing; you can often erase pencil marks on the cover, but ink writing is forever -- it sinks into the cover paper which is quite absorbent.

 

I actually like to see a previous owner's name (sometimes indicated in book seller's descriptions as POS for Previous Owner's Signature) on the inside back cover; I think it adds character to the booklet. Haldeman-Julius booklets weren't meant to be decorative -- they were meant to be read and used up!

Spine Problems

Cover spine rubbing, where the surface layer of paper has pealed away from the cover spine, is very common. It shows most commonly on red-colored covers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red covers also seem to show chipping at spine tips more than other colored covers, perhaps because the red dye didn't saturate well into the cover stock.

 

 

 

The real problem with spines is splitting. It's most serious when the split extends all the way to the staple; this increases the likelihood that the splitting will continue through the entire spine, resulting in the cover splitting in two with the front and back totally separated.

Mmmmm -- tasty!

Nibbling

Mice and insects alike love Haldeman-Julius booklets. Evidently the low quality of the paper is quite tasty to these critters.

 

I have a number of nibbled booklets, probably because they so often ended up being stored in attics and basements by their original owners.

Warping

Two basic causes of warping are water damage and poor packing.

Water damage is worse; you can usually see staining in water-damaged booklets, especially at the earliest and latest pages as well as the front and back covers. If the damage is bad enough, the top finish (sizing) is washed off the pages which look and feel washed out in a very unpleasant way.

When booklets are squished in between stacks of other booklets in boxes, they often get warped. Such booklets don't suffer the staining and the washed-out look and feel of water-damaged booklets, but the warping is annoying. Sometimes you can get the warp out by laying something heavy on top of the booklet for a week or so, but the warp often returns. Bummer.

Staple Problems

There are three major problems associated with staples: paper tearing, rusting, and staining.

 

Staples put stress on the cover and pages that they pierce. Folding the cover and pages back and forth as you turn them cause further stress, eventually causing the paper to pull away and tear at the staple holes. Eventually the tears to the cover can be so severe that the cover breaks free from the block.

 

 

 

Staples seem to attract humidity and often rust. Sometimes the rusting gets so bad that it eats through the metal and the staple breaks.

 

 

 

Severe rusting often results in staining to the pages, especially the center pages.

You can use very fine sandpaper to remove some of the rust, but you need to be careful that you don't destroy the paper around the staple in the process.

Booklet sheets printed or cut incorrectly can result in loss of text at the top or bottom of the block

Offset Cut

This fault comes directly from the factory. Either the pages are printed incorrectly before they get to the cutting machine or the pages are fed to the machine incorrectly; the result is that the printing comes too high or too low on the page.

Sometimes the printing is so offset from its proper position that text is lost. Since this directly impacts the usefulness of the booklet, such a loss of content is a grievous fault.

Edge stains are serious if they extend into the block...

... like this one

Block Edge Stains

If you've got to have a minor stain, hope that it's on the block edge (especially the bottom) where it's least visible. Check out your own booklet; you'll see that such edge stains are common.

 

 

 

 

What you DON'T want is for the stain to be so severe that it permeates the borders or, worse, extends into the text itself.

Internal Browning, Foxing, and Staining

Foxing and browning are the most common form of internal discoloration. Both are consequences of the aging of cheaper paper.

 

 

Browning usually starts at the borders, with the center part of the page (where the text is) browning later. Foxing -- those random-shaped spots of various colors -- can happen anywhere on the page; the intensity of the foxing has to do with the acid content of the paper and other factors with which I am unfamiliar.

 

 

 

 

Stains that you see along the page borders sometimes migrate inward from edge stains; others are the result of humidity absorption (damp staining).

 

 

 

 

Usually the most objectionable stains are those that cover text. Luckily most of these stains are quite light; while they might migrate over text, the text isn't obscured.

 

 

The worst type of stains (with the possible exception of very heavy migrated edge stains and severe damp stains) are those that obscure text to the degree that you can't read it.

Internal Writing & Stamps

Owner-added writing is pretty common in Haldeman-Julius booklets. People like to take notes, check off sections they like, or use the blank pages at the end of some booklets to keep track of phone numbers and other unrelated trivia.

An extremely common form of writing is the owner's name, often accompanied by the date the booklet was received or read. Sometimes the owner uses a name stamp. (I'd rather see the name written in; I find it more personal and, frankly, charming.)

Internal Tears

As with cover tears, internal tears run the gamut from the annoying to the disastrous.

The outside edges of pages are particularly susceptible to tearing, especially as the cheap, thin paper used in these booklets ages and dries out. The small tears have a nasty habit of migrating inward, extending the damage. If the tear gets big enough, you may want to consider using acid-free archival tape to patch it.

Internal tears often begin at staple stress points. While it's pretty easy to use archival tape to patch larger page tears, it's tougher to get close enough to the staple to apply tape effectively