If you want to mail valuable items via Registered Mail they need to be wrapped in paper tape--no plastic tape allowed. That is why I bought this stuff. It seems to work fine. I have found that if it does not seem to be sticking well then you need to use more water to wet the tape.
Excellent tape for strong permanent sealing of cardboard boxes especially for storage or mailing. Cannot be peeled off like plastic tape and the glue does not gradually soak into the cardboard which causes plastic tape to fall off after some time.
If you want a paper based tape yes you have to wet this tape. But this is very flexible and reasonable to work with. I wanted something to seal the back side of picture frames and this works fine