Just as an experiment I started sending out cards to my buyers in a certain format and also asking sellers to send cards to me using the same method.

Here are the results after 30 sends and receives. No losses, no damage.

Here is the method:
No card value over $15
No quantity over five cards
Mail only in a clear plastic (but flexible)sleeve.
Place cards in a standard white envelope.

Attached is a sample that arrived today which actually contained 9 cards!! Note the postage cost which is exactly what the seller charged me.
Comments???

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
Just as an experiment I started sending out cards to my buyers in a certain format and also asking sellers to send cards to me using the same method.

Here are the results after 30 sends and receives. No losses, no damage.

Here is the method:
No card value over $15
No quantity over five cards
Mail only in a clear plastic (but flexible)sleeve.
Place cards in a standard white envelope.

Attached is a sample that arrived today which actually contained 9 cards!! Note the postage cost which is exactly what the seller charged me.
Comments???

I've had sellers using the method for some time, it all depends if they wish to adhere to ebay policy or not.

Just a note you may wish to consider; you have shown the sellers personal details and they may not wish for it to be displayed on a public site.

Yes, quite right. I didn't think of that. I trust that we are all nice people and that nothing untoward should occur due to my oversight.

Too late I've already broken into his house and stolen all his stuff, oh and your house by the way as you were not in.

Unfortunatly this is now the way of things. Everyone knows you can send cards round the world for just a couple of dollars but the crazy quotes just keep on coming.
I've just asked a guy in America to send me 2 promos and he wants $14 so that is the end of that conversation.
I've pretty much given up looking at ebay auctions because even if I find the item I want at a price I am willing to pay one look at the postage cost being asked and that is the end of that.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
Too late I've already broken into his house and stolen all his stuff, oh and your house by the way as you were not in.

Wolfie, are you still imprisoned under Dillon's paws? I once strolled down his street to the shore on Google Maps, but I noticed that people tend to drive and park on the wrong side of the street. You might disagree, though.

I really miss the days when we had international Book Rate and Surface Mail. (Small packets almost always were tossed on a plane, even if you paid 'surface' rate.) One key in Sean's suggestion is the limit on card value. It shouldn't be "frowned upon" by eBay if a seller offers non-tracked, cheap shipping if agreed to by the buyer. Some sellers consider it "self-insurance" if the cost of possible replacement is well below the risk of the mails going astray. But one dispute from an irate buyer can ruin their entire day. If you deal a lot with low-cost items, you might not want to spend extra hours discussing multiple shipping options.

Actually, it's more likely that a shipment will be "diverted" if it's armor-plated and shows that a lot of postage and tracking was paid for it, than if it looks like friendly correspondence. Regular mail is reliable, unless perhaps you live in a flat/apartment where your incoming mail is accessible to riff raff. I worry much more about a letter with a plastic sleeve of cards getting mangled by automatic sorting machines than I do about non-deliveries.

I am pleased to hear that you have not encountered any of the unscrupulous buyers out there who may take advantage of this shipping method. I am too afraid to send any way other than w/tracking.

Why would risk that when it cost around 75 cents more to ship in a bubble mailer? Heck you could probably ship one card cheaper in a bubble mailer and get delivery confirmation.

I've been sending cards valued under $7 maximum 2 cards per envelope for .50 for awhile now. Occasionally replacing a damaged card, which i havent yet, more than outweighs the cost of lost sales due to higher shipping.

quote:

Originally posted by Studio-Hades:
I've been sending cards valued under $7 maximum 2 cards per envelope for .50 for awhile now. Occasionally replacing a damaged card, which i havent yet, more than outweighs the cost of lost sales due to higher shipping.

That may be worth it, but the one posted was $2.10. I pay $1.69 for 3 ounces in a bubble mailer with dc (plus $0.75 for the bubble mailer so $2.44 total, and I don't buy my bubble mailers in bulk so I'm paying full retail).

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:


I pay $1.69 for 3 ounces in a bubble mailer with dc (plus $0.75 for the bubble mailer so $2.44 total, and I don't buy my bubble mailers in bulk so I'm paying full retail).

Glad to hear you say that. . . I do the same thing, shipped online. . .I see people sending me the same size bubble packs that I'm sending for $1.69 with prices close to $3 -- like $2.97 or something. . . I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, or if they were. . .

Now what I haven't figured out is how to ship more than 13 oz of cards inexpensively. . . that gets expensive fast. . .

Ohh. . . and the most interesting/inexpensively package I've received lately was a piece of cardboard, folded in half taped all the way around the edges with the address written on it. . . very secure, and very cheap packing materials.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:


I pay $1.69 for 3 ounces in a bubble mailer with dc (plus $0.75 for the bubble mailer so $2.44 total, and I don't buy my bubble mailers in bulk so I'm paying full retail).

Glad to hear you say that. . . I do the same thing, shipped online. . .I see people sending me the same size bubble packs that I'm sending for $1.69 with prices close to $3 -- like $2.97 or something. . . I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, or if they were. . .

Now what I haven't figured out is how to ship more than 13 oz of cards inexpensively. . . that gets expensive fast. . .

Yeah...at that point you're better off using a small flat rate priority box...it's like $5.15 or something like that...just has to weight less than 70 lbs.

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:


I pay $1.69 for 3 ounces in a bubble mailer with dc (plus $0.75 for the bubble mailer so $2.44 total, and I don't buy my bubble mailers in bulk so I'm paying full retail).

Glad to hear you say that. . . I do the same thing, shipped online. . .I see people sending me the same size bubble packs that I'm sending for $1.69 with prices close to $3 -- like $2.97 or something. . . I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, or if they were. . .

Now what I haven't figured out is how to ship more than 13 oz of cards inexpensively. . . that gets expensive fast. . .

Yeah...at that point you're better off using a small flat rate priority box...it's like $5.15 or something like that...just has to weight less than 70 lbs.

Yeah. . . unfortunately small flat rate boxes are a bit too shallow for 100 count boxes.

The methods discussed may be a cheap way to send cheap cards, but it doesn't provide an answer to the purchase of expensive cards or multiple cards that get expensive. eBay's recent changes in virtually all areas, not just shipping, have been counter productive and unnecessary.

As a buyer I have taken to go back to the old fashion method. I know many card dealers around the country from past purchases. I am buying direct at very reasonable shipping, sometimes free.

Now it can well be argued that there is no buyer protection. Fine, I am doing business with reputable people and so far have had nothing go missing. I will take the chance, eBay has gone too far for me.

In recent years I've often done deals with sellers outside of ebay. It suits me as it's often cheaper and returning to the same sellers does count for something; and it suits the seller because if only Paypal is used then that's the only fees involved, ebay don't get to charge them twice. It's totally against ebay rules...I wonder why?! Something to do with not getting insertion or final value fees perhaps?!

Unfortunately when it comes to selling the occasional item, then ebay is the only place for me to sell. I've looked at other auction sites in the UK, but one of the rival ones called ebid has a very poor amount of viewings and hardly any selection of sellers offering trading cards. And that's the killer thing with ebay, they know they beat the auction site opposition, and because of that they set their own rules, knowing that the majority will grumble, but end up still using them.

Another method I use when shipping sets up to about 90 cards is pack four cards each into a 9 pocket Ultra-Pro page (or equivalent)That gives me about 3 pages which I then slot inside a manila folder for protection. Then the whole lot will slip (just!) into an A4 sized white envelope and mails at a very low postage rate.

As for expensive cards, I am of the opinion that despite popular belief most Post Offices in western countries rarely do lose mail. For individual cards of a higher value I would still be inclined to put them into a stiff plastic sleeve and then into a bubble mailer. Costs a little more but worth it.

I believe in white envelopes until the day I begin to receive common letters broken or damage. I can deal with the problem for a bank statement or some spam mail, but I don't believe someone feel the same for a trading card.

quote:

Glad to hear you say that. . . I do the same thing, shipped online. . .I see people sending me the same size bubble packs that I'm sending for $1.69 with prices close to $3 -- like $2.97 or something. . . I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, or if they were. . .

A single card with a cost of Shipping of near $3. I can understand if the seller ask me $3 for S&H, but if he/she pays $3 for only the shipping. He/she is making something wrong.

quote:

Yeah. . . unfortunately small flat rate boxes are a bit too shallow for 100 count boxes.

webjon, I use the 1096 box for 100 plastic boxes. I don't like the USPS attitude against the 1096 box. For Domestic has a Zone base cost, but for International buy in their site the postage is the same like the Small Rate Box.

I tend to mail up to 6 or 7 cards in between flexible "cards savers." I stick on 66 cents for the postage. None have come back to me and all have arrived in good shape. Still trying to figure out the cheapest way to send a few cards overseas.

Just to throw in my two half pennies worth into the discussion. Last year, according to dear old eBay I sold 287 items on their site. Of those, only three caused me any real problems due to the postage route used. Two packages of autograph cards never reached their destinations. They were sent Royal Mail First Class Signed For and simply never arrived. I refunded the buyers straight away and got my own refund from the Royal Mail several weeks later. The third one was a bit more complicated. It again went First Class Signed For but it arrived next day, was signed for and I had positive feedback posted by the buyer. 60 days later, the buyer put a fraudulent chargeback through his credit card to claim his money back through Paypal. As I'd used Signed For and could demonstrate online that the package had been delivered to the address supplied to me through Paypal, his claim was ultimately rejected by Paypal and they said they would be passing the details on to the police as it was a clear case of fraud.

The point here is that had I used the cheapest option available in all three cases, i.e. stick the correct postage on and just drop it in the nearest post box, I would have been out of pocket to the tune of over 100 GBPounds as I would have had no proof of postage for the first two items which would have been needed to claim a refund from the Royal Mail and no proof of delivery for the third item which would have been needed to convince Paypal not to accept the credit card chargeback. In these three cases, I could have saved 3 UKPounds in postage and it would have cost me over 100 UKPounds to cover the refunds out of my own pocket, so using the cheapest option to send the cards would have been a very false economy.