I have NEVER understood why MODERN cards do this!!!

[Orioles1954]

Originally Posted by Tao_Moko

This has been done with relics for much longer. Religious, fossil, meteorite, and plenty of other historical artifacts like flags, uniforms and documents. Preservation has always been secondary to maximizing revenue. This isn't going away and will likely only get worse.

That makes sense. I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormon) and the first 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon is one of America's most expensive books - selling for around 80K last I checked. A couple years ago an independent seller
bought a copy for around 40K and was selling 530ish individual pages for $200/per. I'm not sure how it went but sadly a common practice among all interests. Pages with "key passages" were sold anywhere from $500-1500.

[Exhibitman]

Pulling apart stuff is a long-established rule. Pierce Egan's Boxiana books from the first part of the 19th century included copper plate engravings of notable boxers. They have been broken down for the engravings for a long time. The engravings are rag paper and do not suffer the same acid damage that pulp paper does; the book bindings are organic glues and often deteriorate first. This is an engraving of HOFer Dick Curtis from the 1820 original edition:



Pretty nice for 200 years old.

In 1840 Egan issued a compilation volume of prints, entitled Boxiana or Sketches of Ancient & Modern Pugilism. I bought and pulled apart a wrecked 1840 edition to get my collection of HOFers with no contemporaneous cards and photos from their careers.