Cut Out Damaged First Day Covers - Garbage?

I just discovered these in my bin and unfortunately they have been cut and taped back together by the previous owner.

Are they just garbage or save for their cancels and "history"?
Other thoughts?

They are easily had and common in undamaged form so yes, it's safe to chuck them.

Agree with Battlestamps. It is hard to imagine (and painful to see) a stamp collector putting cellophane tape on stamps or covers

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"Master" =s "kid".

Maybe someone told him that you are not supposed to take the stamps off, so he did his best to put them back.

Depending on the age, he did a fair job.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Garbage. It pains me to even look at them. I would trash them.

Yes, very painful. Off to the recycle bin

Just a thought: If you put them in a folder & take them to your next show, head for the table with FDCs & go through the $1 box to get replacements. Usually you can talk down the items$$ if you get enough so you can get replacements for a relative good price.

I would hang on to them. If you are a member of a local stamp club or have an opportunity to talk to young stamp collectors, they are very physical examples of what NOT to do ....

I'm late to this conversation, but am interested in knowing what the dos and donts are regarding FDCs. I recently purchased a cover for my topical art collection that I was purely interested in for the special cancellation mark. The cover has an ugly, and irrelevant, reproduction on the far left, and I am wondering if it's acceptable to cut it down for my album so that just the stamp and cancellation mark are featured. Is this a no-no?

Yes, a no-no for a stamp, covers collection

To clarify – a no-no for a collection of philatelic items, as opposed to just covers?

Your post mentioned a FDC collection, so I was assuming you were referring to that.
But I re-read your post and I think I better understand.
If you just want the stamp and cancel you can cut it down. I would caution this if there is anything else on the cover that effects the value (e.g., the FDC) or any other provenance, etc. I really comes down to what you are collecting and why. and then value if that's important to you. The cover often tells a story.
I am sure others will chime in... Thats my 2 cents.

That's very helpful, thank you. I don't think it's a valuable cover, so I doubt I'd be losing much by cropping it. But I am new to this, and am very teach-able! So happy to hear other opinions...

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Ages ago, collectors would cut down a cover so that the stamp-postmark-cancel remnant could more easily be mounted in an album.

This practice is now out-of-fashion ... deeply out-of-fashion.

That having been said, I've cut down a few covers, anyway; sometimes, the cover was more a trashy remnant than a cover; sometimes, the cover was an unremarkable waste of space; sometimes, I just felt like going old school.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

One will encounter it more in topical exhibits ... to leave covers intact and to "window" the cover by cutting a slit in the exhibit page so the stressed feature is visible and the rest hidden. It also allows more space for additional write-up or philatelic material on the page. I don't have an example handy, but am sure someone will post a typical topical exhibit page here shortly.

This is very helpful. Would it be better for me to overlap the ugly repro with another item rather than cutting it?