I see that the U S P S are raising all their charges again more price hikes on shipping our cards soon it will not be feasible to buy cards from any overseas seller this is getting to be a sad state of of the ever increasing extra costs on our hobby I wonder how long it will take E Bay to capatilise on this and find a way to gouge extra out of their customers and the people who keep them in buisness not long i think

If you do not live in the US and are purchasing cards on ebay it is a losing proposition. If the seller uses the GSP to get you your item you pay out the nose.

If you live outside of North America your best option is to use a mail service. At least that way you can combine your items into one package and save on shipping and customs charges.

The problem with this is not the post office and it's not the dealers, it's ebay and it's rules as to what the seller has to do to get your money back when things go wrong.

Normal postage from the usa to the uk for instance is just $2-3 for some cards.

There is a crisis in the United States Postal Service that raising costs will not help, just add more insult to the existing injury. Its due in equal parts to their poor management and understaffing and the changing habits of society, which they can't control. I can't speak for other states or different parts of the world, but here in New York the postal service has never been worse at any price.

The Post Office is being overwhelmed with the delivery of packages. They are putting more and more resources into package delivery with usually short deadlines. People don't want to bother buying in stores anymore. They want merchandise at their door. The stores and places like Amazon encourage the home delivery buying with free shipping offers and discounts for online purchases only. More people are also working out of their homes and packages that would normally go to commercial sites before are now arriving as residential traffic.

Some of these packages go thru carriers like UPS or FedEx, but a lot are dropped off at central locations and delivered by USPS trucks in the last leg. Because of deals made, the PO is losing money on some of these arrangements and they are cutting back and slowing down the regular delivery of letters and daily mail. We have 6 days a week mail here. I am lucky if I get 5 days now. It seems like every week 1 or 2 days are skipped. Mail is always taking longer. And now it costs more for the privilege of not getting your mail on time.

People have been complaining like mad. The PO doesn't care, they can't do any better, they need more money. It's not the mailman's fault. Complaints to local council people and congressmen in New York are thru the roof. They hold hearings with PO officials. Promises are made and nothing happens.

This is the situation and I mention it only because some people, especially those in other countries, may not realize what is going on when we try to mail anything here even domestically. It's just a mess and to have to pay more for it is a real shame.

And yes, eBay rules are stifling and costly because of buyer protection and seller "take your chances".

I am in the US and have collected hockey cards for roughly 25-years. I am to the point where I am wanting to sell off a lot of what I have accumulated over the years.

For me to mail a bubble mailer in the US with a tracking number included it's roughly $3.

For me to send that same bubble mailer across the border to Canada, it costs me $10.50 (a 50-cent increase as of this past weekend) with no tracking.

If you want to add tracking for Canada, it is a flat rate of $25 (as of last week, I'm sure it went up this past weekend, too).

As I mentioned, these are hockey cards. Canadians tend to be a little more interested in hockey than my fellow Americans. I offer to split shipping costs, but even charging $12.50 for tracking scares off some. This kills the low and mid-end market for US people trying to ship outside the country. Why is someone going to pay $10.50 or more for a $5 card? They're not.

I am in a few facebook groups and a fellow collector was trying to finish up a few base sets before the price hike went into effect because he is an overseas collector. He roughly said that it was now too costly to have cards shipped to him and he was going to find a new hobby.

The problem is we are getting less service for more cost here we had a twenty four hour delivery for an extra fee this was ended now since charges have gone up it now takes up to a week or more for a PWE to be delivered one took over three weeks our Trade Me were pressing me for feedback and I had not even received my item As ifish says i use a mail service from US to NZ I try to arrange my parcels to all arrive at the same time and combine I have just combined six parcels if they were paid for indivually would of cost me $104 NZ by combining I paid $37 great saving and tracked sometimes there is US domestic charges but when all costs are averaged out the price per card drastically comes down but this systen dose not work out with single packages and latley has slowed down I paid for 5 to 9 day delivery but 4 of the days have gone by and no notification of sending yet Raven says it is all down to the postal services being overwhelmed with parcels wich cant be handled quickly and efficently there is no break even for govt departments anymore it is all privatisation and profit now so the user pays even though we are getting less service for more cost and we can jump up and down all we want but they are not going to take any notice and just keep on putting charges up every so often