I’ve frequently considered writing a shipping best practices guide for trading cards. . .and I think I need to do it, but a few incidents lately have prompted me to write a few quick words about packing/shipping.
First, and most importantly — it is the seller’s responsibility to get the items they ship to the buyer in good condition. Let me repeat. It IS the SELLERS responsibility get the goods to the buyers. Why? Simple – a buyer has nothing to do with how the card is packaged so why should they be responsible for it.
Still not clear, how about an illustrative story? Consumer Bob buys a $2000 laptop from Dell. Sweet! Dell ships that $2000 laptop in a manila envelope with the charger and docking station bouncing around in the envelope. It gets destroyed by the post office, so now that’s Bob’s responsibility to go to the post office to file an insurance claim (that the post office will laugh at because the item was packed horribly) to get his money back because that laptop is HIS responsibility as soon as he pays for it, right? Obviously not, the item would be returned to Dell who would be responsible for sending Bob what he paid for. The same is true for sellers on eBay and other sites as well. Don’t believe me? It’s eBay, Paypal and Amazon policy that the seller is responsible for delivering goods as advertised, they will basically ALWAYS find in favor of any buyer who can prove their items were shipped inappropriately.
On to packing tips. . . this seems so obvious to me, but it must not be. . . after you pack a box shake it — if it rattles, bangs or makes other funny noises don’t ship it! Items you ship are just as likely to get damaged from the packing materials as they are outside forces. Cards rattling around in boxes are going to be rubbing their most delicate areas (corners/edges) against the sides of a hard plastic or cardboard material for their entire journey to the receiver. Same goes for bigger things — fill the empty spaces around the stuff you ship so it can’t move around at all. Keeping it still in the package is going to help it travel well, if you haven’t noticed these mail carriers handle huge amounts of mail every day, and they don’t have the time to carry each one as though it’s full of Waterford Crystal so you need to pack it like they are going to try to break it — just in case someone at the shipping department is having a bad day.
My rule of thumb. . . if I won’t throw it down my steps I won’t ship it. Why? Our precious collectible packages are mixed in with other much less fragile and heavier items — like books/magazines, tools, etc. Not to mention our items are handled by many people and machines who don’t care about the stuff in the package nearly as much as the receiver does. . .
Ok, mini-rant over. . . hopefully there are some useful tips in there. Do yourself a favor, take the extra 90 seconds to package stuff properly — charge more for it if you have to, it’s worth it in the long run.
Jon
I noticed a very questionable Katie Holmes autograph on eBay — item 120494988517. I contacted the seller to let them know their card may be a counterfeit . . . You never know how someone is going to respond when you get in touch with them, but this is a perfect illustration of the responses that should make you avoid a seller’s auctions:
I recently contacted a gentleman on eBay who was selling this card. I always approach people on eBay with caution as you never know what sort of reaction someone will have when you tell them a rather expensive card they are trying to sell is likely fake. This particular seller was very grateful and provided some nice scans of a pair of graded Katie Holmes Batman Begins autographs. The one pictured here appears to be counterfeit.
