Removing Historical Autograph Triple Folder Cards Caused Paperloss
 

Not sure if anyone else has run into this, but I decided to remove my T205 / T206 cards from a HA triple folder and was shocked and disappointed to find that they were all held in place with tape.

Removing them caused paper-loss to every card. I've attached pictures.

I emailed HA about it, and referenced a forum post from an HA employee which said "We wanted to let you know the cards aren't permanently mounted with adhesive inside the triple folder, just completely encased for protection."

HA responded with "The forum post you sent states that the cards are not permanently attached, we did not glue them, tape was used."

Needless to say, that's a bunch of crap.

I understand that this was done once upon a time by collectors. But nowadays people know better and it's extremely sad that people are still ruining cards (and their value) by doing this.

HA Forum Post Link: https://www.historicautographcompany...triple-folders

Historical Autographs
 

I have some of these and have been tempted to break them out. Frankly I kind of expected that they would use cards with back damage, since they are cheaper and you can't see the back anyway.

So I wonder if the answer is to cut them out and soak them, so the tape separates naturally, rather than try to pull them out?

I doubt soaking will help. In some of the cases I have found that the card falls off the tape with paper loss even without trying to remove it yourself. You can see in the Flick below that is settled into the bottom right corner already before extraction.

My theory is that these were designed to work without tape, but once they started building them they realized they banged around and were off-center, maybe they ordered the wrong size. Rather than redesign, they decided to call it a sunk cost, bought some double-sided tape, and moved on.

I often tell people who are trying to sell these to break apart or remove that the break-up value may be substantially less than they think. Assume paper loss in any purchase for these reasons.

I learned this the hard way a couple of years ago…

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...04f0f26d_b.jpg

Fortunately, I was harvesting the Wilbur Good signature, and found a better place for it in my custom “Signature Collection” jumbo.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...dcdc4055_b.jpg