Those old cases...
where the joints are stored made up like that, have always bothered me. Aside from the temptation to not regularly lubricate the joint corks, the occasional shocks that horns in a case are exposed to would be more likely to split a barrel or a bell.
My grandfather's clarinets were cased that way, and despite his meticulous care of them (including a periodic "breaking" of the joints (as we used to say in the oil and gas extraction industry) to lube the corks), both of the bells suffered top to bottom cracks over the years. Particularly bad were those old English "boot" cases, where the parts rattled around within the tubes.
I note with alarm that the A "full Boehm" horns tend to be found in these cases. Both my A and Bb horns were in the "pochette" style cases, with individual joint slots - they date to 1966, purchased new. Selmer was nice enough to rig me up a custom case innards to fit the pair, all at no extra charge, as long as I returned the case for the A horn unused.