General Forum

not to mention that trading is fun!  it is a delight to help another collector out, and especially cool to complete someone's set or team set.

mark z

Yeah, shipping. I'll give anyone my Emmitt Smith Score RC if you can convince my wife that even 1 measley stamp is worth using to send a trade cross country. If only one knew ...

i keep trading, and i'm still alive!

Hey Catsup,

I can ship18 cards in a business envelope packed 6 to a wide penny sleeve, taped in between two pieces of cereal box cardboard cut to fit inside the envelope and also taped together for normal letter mail to the USA which costs me $1.20 plus tax so $1.35 Cdn.  I have sent many envelopes to the States containing such packed cards.  One member on here from Kansas used my packing material to then send me my cards (the French on the cereal box was the give-away). His cost was normal international letter mail. We did several trades this way. But the fact is,when you reach about 10 of these packets, it is just as cheap to box them as some have described above and send them all at once - you can send as many as 300 cards properly packaged for about $15. The key is the packaging; the smaller, the better.

Try my other call sign for a trade; I will send you your 18 cards and you can see how they are packaged before you send me mine.

And no V3, the card has not yet arrived but I trust you. Yes, I am also Sandyrusty.

Interesting. Maybe I was charged a package rate rather than a letter rate, even though the cards were shipped in a PWE.  I put "baseball cards" on the customs form so maybe that was my problem. 

I can't believe no one has mentioned this yet! Instead of using the small flat-rate Priority box for lots of cards, use the flat-rate Priority Bubble Mailer. I just shipped off 484 cards for $6.80 in the bubble mailer. It was nearly 3 pounds of cards/packaging! I knew a small Priority box only holds 250-300 cards, so I needed a different way to ship so many cards. I put the cards in a 300-count cardbox, a 150-count cardbox and a 50-card plastic box. I rubber-banded the smaller boxes to each other and slid the boxes in parallel to each other. It worked perfectly and was delivered safely 3 days later (I mail in the late afternoon). I could have used two of the small flat-rate boxes and put them inside the mailer and it would have still come out at the price of $6.80, since the boxes are free and no one would have even known those boxes were inside the BM.

ketchupman,

I discovered recently that as soon as you declare a value on the package, no matter what size, the rate of postage goes up. On a small bubble envelope, it went from just over $3 to almost $6.  Lesson for me was, don't declare a value unless the post office clerk tells you, you have to.  If the package is small enough to go out as personal mail, then it doesn't have to be declared.

yep I love the flat-rate Priority Bubble Mailer.  My local po does not stock them so I had to order the suppliels online.

I like the extra layer of protection for the box as well.

I have never seen dings in the corners from box damage like I have when a box is sent by itself full of cards.

I acually have been using similar method with first class package when shipping 100 cards in a 100 ct box as well, but putting in larger padded mailer...

mark z

sandy I think you might have found my problem.  next time I'm shipping to Canada I just won't delcare a value.  I might have to propose a trade with you to test it out :)

Just curious - and I hate to open up a can of worms - but will President Trump's work to dissolve NAFTA affect our trading with Canadian partners? (By the way, I've completed a quarter of my deals with Canadiens, so I hope nothing deters that, especially politics.)

Yes that IS an elephant honey, what do you mean shoo it away!

Crickets ............................... =/

;)