right away and figured that the book may have been "repaired". Looking closer, the original staple is gone and shows some degree of residual rusting.

I suspect that along the way the rusting staple was removed and replaced with an over-sized staple. I don't think it was ment to deceive, more perhaps an effort to display well.

Of the 229 match covers/books that I got, there were two of these feature books from the Sands. The other has the the original staple in-place.

You made an interesting comment about these showing up on the market.....

What type of pricing are we starting to see? To include pricing for a bad book and a good book. Since the full book comes with 3 rows of matches, all are feature matches, I guess therte may be an advantage to take books that are missing front-row matches and breakout the complete back-rows, create a new set of three and re-staple. This could lead to multiple staple holes in the matches.

Since this book is likely a 'refurbished' one, I'll remove the new staple and have a look at the matches.

Thanks,

Jim