Having sold online for over 15 years and operating an AH for over 5 years, I have a pretty good feel on shipping costs.
We only use USPS and try to use the most economical way, which on larger lots is always the flat rate boxes. We try to factor in the appropriate shipping and enough to cover the prorated insurance we pay privately. At the end of each auction we are usually a bit short of the break even mark, but not enough to fret. Now we do not have a shipping department and we do recycle some packing materials, AND the USPS boxes are free. So we may have a slight advantage, but we try to keep the 1-3 card purchases that are $100-1000 at $6-12 depending on value, and the larger ones $14-20 again depending on the size, weight and value.
I will say many of the AH's I purchase from do packing to the overkill which is probably part of the inflated shipping. I recently received two SGC slabs in a box triple packaged that you could have fit 20 of them in. This is very much the norm for most of them. Extreme caution on the side of error, but again I would say a real shitstorm would hit if they threw your $2,000 card in a top loader and a legal (or even padded) envelope and you received it resembling a banana.
Most of their base cost seems to be with the carrier they use. Many folks detest one or all three of them, USPS, UPS, and FedEx, but you have to go with one of them. In all of the thousands of items we have sent thru the USPS, only one never got there. A postal employee stole it, the Postal Inspectors caught him and we eventually got the cards back through our insurance company. We have confidence in them and find their pricing to our liking
SO... after all of this I am not really sure I explained or justified anything, just some input that agrees with others, most AH's are not making a profit on the shipping/handling/insurance.
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