Usps
 

I walked out my front door today just as the mailman (woman) was pulling up. I noticed she had a small stack of 4-5 Priority Mail envelopes on her lap. Looked promising! I also noticed that they were all tightly held together by a rubberband or two. She apparently needed to scan each one, but instead of taking off the rubberband, she began attempting to scan each by folding the corners or even essentially folding them in half. My jaw dropped. "Whoa!! Please don't bend those!" She shrugged, said woops and handed them over. When I "expressed my irritation", she said "I didn't bend them", with a straight face. Huh?

I knew at least one of the envelopes held a T3 Turkey Red and I walked into the house expecting the worst. I've looked at the card - no problems with it or any of the other packages. Cool. However, the packaging was flimsy at best and it would have been a real shame to have ruined that card. I think my blood pressure is back to normal now.

Please, please always pack with care. I know that mail and package carriers are just doing their job, but they don't care about the "old cardboard" as much as we do. And when in doubt, send instructions and/or plead with novice sellers on how to properly pack and ship. Better safe than sorry.

Happy Collecting,
Craig

USPS priority small flat rate boxes are great. Price is always the same and is always firm and don't have to worry about them bending it in half. I would've been pretty ticked too If I saw that and they were my cards coming.

Craig
 

Craig, I always try to tell my customers at the Post Office -"If you don't want it bent, then put it in a package that won't bend". Sounds simple, but people are too cheap to purchase a photo mailer and too cheap to pay the parcel rate, then they complain when the item is bent.

If someone is sending T3's through the mail in a flexible envelope they should expect the worst. Large envelopes go through high speed sorting machines at 15-20000 pieces per hour. They go around corners and through rollers and they have barcodes sprayed on them.


Rick

Great advice. And keep in mind that even boxes get handled roughly at times, and may be beneath stuff like what I used to ship 20+ lbs in a 7x7x6 sort of box. Or the stuff a friend of mine ships, he gets about 50lbs into the medium flat rate box. If there's no packing material and your package is in the bin before the heavy stuff comes in it will get squashed.

Steve B

I always charge the 4 bucks or so when sending packages, I hope anyone sending to me will do the same. Priority mail box.

Joe

Shit! I came home today to a package sitting towards the front of my yard, near the sidewalk...USPS should not leave a package on your step when there's high winds(we had gust up to 55 today) and rain(box was pretty wet)... Needless to say, I was a little pissed, but luckily, the contents were unharmed..

mail
 

Another reason to buy graded ;)

Can't believe how many sellers send out high value graded cards in bubble envelopes. Received a '52 Topps Lenhardt PSA 7 recently with the holder split in half and of course the card is creased. It was insured but the seller didn't seem too concerned. Needless to say no 5 star feedback here. Just a lack of common sense, too lazy or too cheap or all of the above.

I am sick of the post office. Right now its the 3rd day they are supposed to be delivering an expensive card to me. They lied the first day and said they came to the door but they didnt, they then claimed the second day on a redelivery that the carrier had a car accident, now they promised they would have it here "first thing in the morning, 10:30am" and its already a half hour late. Overpaid over-benefitted slow-moving, un-caring workers!!!!!

This isnt the first time i have had problems here either.
:mad:

15 billion in debt

Since I collect photographs, the standard request I add every single time when making my payment to the seller is as follows:

"Please secure the photo with VERY RIGID cardboard or my postman will make every effort to destroy it."

Even if I've bought dozens of photos from the same seller, I always include my request/plea.

Now, of course not all postal employees destroy customer's packages. Just the ones that delivered to Huntington Beach between the years of 1999-2006 and Pasadena from 2006-2012.