Caveat regarding foam in CD cases

[john haueisen]

This may be old news for some of you, but it just happened to me, for the first time, this week.
I opened up the CD jewel case of a Horenstein M3 that I bought several years ago.
I don't remember if I bought it new, or used, but 3 inch squares of foam had been put in the case over the CDs, I presume to keep them from rattling during shipping.

Well, the foam had deteriorated into thousands of sticky crumbs that were adhering to the label side of the CD.  I brushed as much as I could off, but a lot of the gooey mess was still on the label.  Yes, you guessed it--I did a dumb thing.  I used a little CD cleaner spray to help get off the remaining goo.  Yep, it wrecked the CD.

I spend an hour or two yesterday, going through all my CD cases and removing any foam inserts.  Most were in very good condition, but a couple of others were starting to crumble.  I think it would be wise to take chances about the CDs rattling, and get rid of foam inserts.

Has anyone else had this problem?  I wouldn't blame you if you don't want to admit it.
--John H

[alpsman]

Yes I have also this situation especially with Emi ang polygram cds from around 1986. But it is not a damage situation for the cd, except that are quite sticky.

[Eric Nagamine]

This may be old news for some of you, but it just happened to me, for the first time, this week.
I opened up the CD jewel case of a Horenstein M3 that I bought several years ago.
I don't remember if I bought it new, or used, but 3 inch squares of foam had been put in the case over the CDs, I presume to keep them from rattling during shipping.

Well, the foam had deteriorated into thousands of sticky crumbs that were adhering to the label side of the CD.  I brushed as much as I could off, but a lot of the gooey mess was still on the label.  Yes, you guessed it--I did a dumb thing.  I used a little CD cleaner spray to help get off the remaining goo.  Yep, it wrecked the CD.

I spend an hour or two yesterday, going through all my CD cases and removing any foam inserts.  Most were in very good condition, but a couple of others were starting to crumble.  I think it would be wise to take chances about the CDs rattling, and get rid of foam inserts.

-----------------
Been a problem even with LP's from Philips back from the 1970's. It's a real problem in tropical climates.

-------------
Eric Nagamine


Has anyone else had this problem?  I wouldn't blame you if you don't want to admit it.
--John H

[Russell]

Yep--I've had this problem, too.  PolyGram (London/Decca, Philips, DG) used this stuff extensively in their CD box sets starting with their first CDs in the early 80's, and, like many people, I chose to retain those inserts in the boxes.  Bad decision!  Since discovering that the foam was starting to crumble and/or stick to the discs a few years ago, I've gone through my whole collection and removed them all.  Most discs were OK, but I had a few where I could not remove all of the sticky foam bits.

Russell

[chris]

Has anyone else had this problem?  I wouldn't blame you if you don't want to admit it.

I work in a library and this is a HUGE problem.   I meticulously fixed as many as of these sets as possible, but we did have some casualties. 

What's strange is there's seemingly no pattern - five sets received at the same time, with equal(ish) usage, will have two foam inserts that look new and two that are brittle and stuck to the CDs, and one that's simply fallen apart in the case.