As is often the case with what is considered by many to be the best Rupert Annual, this copy has seen plenty of use. The spine has been replaced by an artificial grey tape, it's a neat amateur's job, and successful in its aims in that everything is holding together well and the binding feels reasonably firm. The covers are worn, particularly around the edges and corners, and the page edges show evidence of much thumbing. The 'belongs to' has been completed in pencil and rubbed out, perhaps more than once, and then completed in pencil again. There are brown tape marks in several of the gutters through the book; this tape has everywhere been removed, but again, nothing has become loose and all the pages are present. We have checked every page: in one place the tape mark encroaches onto the printed part of the page by about 8 mm at its widest point, but the text is still readable and nothing is completely obscured; and in a few other places the tape mark encroaches onto the printed par