I remember reading in the not-so-distant past 
about people dealing with horrible Japanese 
sticky tape, but it didn't apply to me at the 
time so I guess I didn't pay enough attention to 
how you deal with it when it is stuck ALL OVER 
your cel and background.  

My newest acquisition of 9 cels presented me 
(quite the newbie) with some things I haven't 
encountered yet.  I finally got around to 
scanning them last night, and I think I opened 
the sealed cel bags on some of them for the 
first time in 20 years (old show -- G Gundam) 
because the bags completely ripped to shreds 
when I pulled the cels out. (And I was 
exceedingly gentle -- Really!  :)  Then some of 
the cels had trees and things cut out and taped 
onto the background.  (Are cut-outs normal for 
cel layers?)  Of course the tape is really nasty 
and yellow.  I do plan on framing most of these, 
so I guess I don't have to touch it because it 
won't show in the framed area.
Another weird thing was that one of the 
backgrounds was really a shiny full background 
sized photo instead of a watercolor.  I am 
guessing it is original, because it also has 
these watercolor cut-out trees taped to it and 
the cel is taped over top of it all.  (Am I 
being as clear as mud here?!)  I'm not 
dissatisfied with the background because it 
looks quite nice and the auction didn't make any 
claims about the background at all (I think the 
whole wordy YJ description was "G Gundam 
set"  :), but I guess I'm wondering what you 
guys think about leaving/removing the tape, and 
if cut-outs layered over the background are an 
every-day occurrence that I just haven't come 
across yet in my very short experience of 
collecting.
Thanks for your responses to all this rambling!
shellie