Always remember, haste makes waste....especially when adhesive tape is involved...

I recently bid on a stamp up for auction at the Delcampe marketplace. I wanted to fill a hole in one of my French colonial pictorial issues to complete the set.  Saw a dealer with the stamp, placed a bid on it, and won it. It was not an expensive stamp, and the dealer mailed it out using French euro- and mixed-denominated commemorative stamps. Unfortnately I had not changed my address at Delcampe, so the stamp was addressed to my old residence, but I had a forwarding address set up with the USPS so it received a new address sticker. So far, so good.

The stamp arrived in this cover. Have blocked out personal info but its a nice cover with a change of address sticker added by USPS that did NOT damage the French stamps!

I opened the letter, and inside were two pieces of what felt to me like index card stock. All good, the stamp should be fine.  The stamp itself had been placed inside a Scott-type center back cut mount  the perfect size to fit the stamp. All good.

Then the dealer decided to attach the mounted stamp to the inside center of one card with....ADHESIVE TAPE over both cut ends of the mount.

Fail, EPIC FAIL.

The stamp itself did not shift during mailing. The use of the right size stamp mount meant that it was snug as a bug in a rug. Simply adhering the mount directly to the card would have been the best solution. But the dealer felt that to secure the stamp, sticky tape was needed.

I do not know what the French use for adhesive on their tape, but the stuff would hold together parts of the Space Station.

How to liberate the stamp from its prison. I could not insert a pair of stamp tongs inside the mount since both cut ends were firmly shut by the tape.  So my plan was to peel one side of the tape off the card, then use tongs to extract stamp from back of mount.  MacGuyver would have been proud.

Alas, the tenacity of the French tape was amazingly strong. It was not going to peel easily. I worked slowly, but soon the Taurus within got the better of me, and I decided to give a harder pull.

DOMMAGE! - the tape ripped, tearing into the mount, and also putting a small rip on the top edge of the stamp itself.   MERDE!

The good news is the stamp itself was not particularly expensive, and I did receive a nice cover in the bargain. But, I still have that hole in my set to fill, all due to the overzealous zeal of a dealer who feared the stamp would not survive the Trans-Atlantic journey secured in every way possible.