L89/L88 heads on EBAY, why so much?

[Hotrodpaul]

The person that I purchased them from said he bought them from an old hot rodder that "Rat Holed" all kinds of high performance Chevy parts. Said these were on the shelf collecting dust for 30 years and were low mile take offs. When they came in, all the parts were original and no bead blasting, etc. Even the valve seats had not been touched. At the time, I had an original Chevy Orange painted bellhousing clutch cover and placed it next to the overspray and it matched exactly. You can see the outline of the Exhaust Manifolds on each head. I asked myself, why would someone paint the Manifolds and part of the head if they were building the engine from scratch? I realized, that is the way engines were built at the Tonawanda plant, painted after assembly, exhaust manifolds and all. I do have some additional pics but no exhaust manifolds.

Paul