Who else hates doing it? I find it very difficult to ruin the beautiful wrappers on cassettes. At least the ones from the eighties when they still gave a crap dog crap about the design. 

So, i started to use a razor to slit around the seams of the case. I can't think of a way to keep the wrapper stuck to the case though. Glue would result in a clumpy, bumpy mess and tape wouldn't work well. Maybe double stick tape, but i really want the result to be clean and reversible.

Are you serious?? It's only a wrapper man,use them or don't use them. It sounds like you are opening a rare boombox or walkman that was sealed in the box

yes well, i'm sure that there are people out there who would find the thought of using cassettes as their primary portable media to be absurd as well.

thankfully for me, i'm not interested too much in peoples criticism. i'm just a fan of eighties cassette wrapper art.

what would i do if i ever got a bunch of sony metallics? or like, 82-84 ucx? throw out the wrapper? just tear the wrapper off and discard it? good grief.

If you like them for the art, cut them off carefully and frame them. A few to one frame, or a cool idea would be a small frame for each. It could be neat.

eric

While i might be crazy enough to want to keep the wrapper intact. I'm not crazy enough to buy tape, especially tape like ux-pro, and not use it. 

I did think of just keeping the wrapping separately, but i just prefer this method. I need the sides and the top and bottom and front and back to be kept intact. To me, destroying the wrapper is the equivalent of burning down a library. it's the loss of information and beauty. 

just a suggestion...why not keep it as it is and use new tapes you can buy from maplins etc 

stick my thumbail in and open that sucker

just did it to a Maxell XLII for Deliverance

felt good - and now i've recorded all over that virgin magnetic tape

badger your such an animal!!! grrrr

Those Sony tapes aren't really too rare.  You should be able to find unsealed copies of them on Ebay, which you could use for recordings, while keeping your sealed ones un-opened.

Unsealed compact cassettes from the 80's !

That Aiwa tape is pimp!!! 

Sigh. I get it. I get it. Nobody here shares my interest in preserving wrappers. 

I'm hardy going to use inferior tape just to save a wrapper. But i want the best of both worlds. 

And it's not like i don't have a mountain of gently used tape that i bought off ebay already. The point is that i like wrapper art. I want to preserve wrapper art. It might seem a bother to some to go through this process just to keep a wrapper that everyone here views as garbage, but a lot of people would view your precious boomboxes as outdated garbage. That's how i got me m70c for 6.99. Is it that difficult to view things through the eyes of another? 

As well, bla, unsealed 80s cassettes. A fraction of my collection:

nice tapes you got there deech, and as for opening brand new tapes, i agree is hard to destroy the wrapping, so what i do is buy others that i can open with out problem for daily use, this way we can preserve the nice ones for display.

I like wrappers too, and I agree that it's a shame to destroy them, but it sounds like you already have lots of unwrapped tapes to record on, so why do you feel pressured to unwrap the wrapped ones?   No matter what brand of wrapped tape you own, you can always find an unwrapped one on Ebay.

I'm a dirty pig

That ux pro is the first time i've done this. It's the only ux pro i have and i wanted to save the wrapper. But i wanted to use the tape too. It seems like a solution to the problem. To me. 

I do search ebay a lot for tape, but here in north america ux pros really get up there in price. And they don't show up often, at least not the eighties ones. The seller i bought this from had a two boxes of ten that went for over 150 a box and i'm a cheap bastard, so. 

I usually go for the used tape lots cus nobody wants used tape it seems. i do have certain things that i look for in used tape. I have 20 1988-89 regular ux en route that i paid 35 bucks for, shipped. And got 24 sony es iv in the mail recently for 80 or so shipped. So when i do get a sealed tape, it's pretty special. But i really can't justify not using a tape. And so, this solution. 

Plus the lure of a sealed tape is something else. So many unsealed tapes waiting to be used and what tape do i want to use? The sealed one. 

I have so many used tapes from the thrift store

dont need to open any new ones.

Ill open a new one if I have many of the same.

I tried to save the wrappers but its difficult.

Office supply shops have clear paper holders for binders

than slide the wrapper in there.

.

the thrifts where i live throw out used blank tapes... i've heard it's for copywrite reasons. lousy copywrite reasons. useless copywrite reasons. stinkin greedy entertainment industry.  

but every now and then one slips through. the other week i found an '85 sony ucx, in pretty good shape. it broke my heart to think that there could be a bunch of other ucx in the trash bin.

a lot of times i'd get all worked up in seeing a quality tape case, only to find a stupid pre-recorded cassette in it. it usually inspires me to search the rest of the tapes to see if the matching cassette is somewhere in a pre-record case.

Maybe you can show them how to use a bulk eraser

than they can sell the blanks.

But it is getting harder to find blank or any cassette tape here at the thrifts now.

$150 for a box of 10??? Are you serious?!

Jeeeeeez...

I walked into an old convenience store 2 months ago with $20, and walked out with 20 Sony UX-Pro 54... and I even left a couple for the next guy because I'm not an asshole.

But now that I know how much people are willing to pay for them I might go back and get the rest heh

I bought one of these at the thrift a couple weeks ago, just because I liked the looks of the wrapper and tape...Straight 80's!