"Holiday Fair" Finds From 1970

I found these vintage pieces at a thrift store in Placerville. They are marked "Holiday Fair N.Y.C. 1970 Japan".
They are such cute - and brightly painted - gals; one is a pencil holder:

And the other two are bookends:

They were in pretty decent condition, actually.
BUT - oh, my gosh - thrift store people!
Please do NOT put tons of sticky cellophane tape all over cool vintage hand-painted pieces!
Aaarrghhh!

By the time I (very carefully and slowly) pulled all of that stupid tape off of them, they didn't look nearly as good!
Naturally, the paint came off with the tape.
I absolutely wanted to scream.
(Actually, I think maybe I DID scream a little - you can ask Lori; she was there.)
Most of the areas you see where the paint is missing resulted from that darned tape being removed.

They're still cute, and I  do understand that they wanted to keep the pair together.
But I think a better way to go might be to take some plastic wrap and wrap it around the items, and then apply tape over that.
I realize the thrift store employees and volunteers aren't going to bother to go to that much trouble.
They have no idea that here are people like me out there who treasure these types of finds and would really love it if they could be better cared-for while they are in the pricing process.
Oh, well - at least they weren't outrageously priced - they weren't even in the "special vintage" section of the store.
I actually kind of felt like going back with the pair of bookends and the tape I had pulled off  of them (that had all of this brightly colored paint on it) and ask for some of my money back, though.
But I couldn't  do it - and I probably wouldn't have, anyway.