[Milsurplus] Tape on shipped item horror

[Hue Miller]

I have some 450 purchases or more going all the way back before Epay to the 
phone-in militaria auctions.
In those hundreds, three times I have received my purchase with tape on it. 
I'm posting this cautionary
note because maybe you can learn from my experience. From now on, I specify 
to seller - NO TAPE
on the item, or I will leave max negative feedback! What inspires this, is 
today I unpacked an electronics
unit shipped to me with styrofoam boards taped to the unit. What fun I now 
look forward to, cleaning
off the sticky residue. You might not think there be souls so ignorant out 
there, but I'm sure you all
have your own astounding science-fiction shipping stories. In this case, 
because the seller did make
an effort to get the item to me unbashed, I'm not going to ding him, but I 
surely will admonish.
In the past, I actually received a plastic-case transistor radio with 
something taped to it. Imagine
how much fun that was to remove tape gum. One really puzzling case was when 
the late, loved and
equally hated Manion's Auction sent me a wooden, painted radio with a tag 
taped with it. Was it
really necessary for the tape to be there, so it could pull off paint with 
it? And that work of genius
was perpetrated by one of Manion's specialist 'describers', employees whose 
job it was to identify
and evaluate submitted items.
But then - you still see at the hamfest electronics equipment with the price 
written on it with marker
pen. That level of ignorance in a homo sapiens puzzles me. I shouldn't be 
puzzled at this age, should
i?
-Hue Miller