flat rate boxes come with $50 insurance by default. I only pay for additional insurance if the value of what I’m shipping is $100+

In dozens and dozens of shipments I’ve only had one damaged/destroyed in postal delivery, it was a stack of cards I’d paid maybe $16 for and was reselling for $30. By the time the post office paid it off they gave me $40 which included the refund for postage

Your cards can be thicker or thinner and weigh differently depending on how played they are and the humidity they are kept in. It is best to double sleeve as soon as they are pulled from packaging and keep them that way, especially if they are foil as this will greatly help against coiling.

Some stores did that when Urza's Legacy came out – they would weigh individual packs and see which ones had foils. This was when they were much rarer in distribution than they are now. You open the pack with the foil and sell the single individually. Other stores would use heat lamps to make the foils in packs bend, then figure out which packs had now-curved foils in them and crack them too.

Luckily, with foils being more common, this is not a cost-effective measure anymore.

PS. My first shipment to Sweden was no hassle and already got the feedback 🙂 Great tip on the Trading Cards, I never would have known that.

Having been playing the shipping game for 13 years there is a lot of factors that go into shipping cards. I'll be happy to share a few.

1) As mentioned in the article, flat rate boxes are your friend. Most of the time you won't want to ship more than 500 cards (small flat rate) because you aren't going to get more than $11 (the cost of shipping) for a box of mixed commons or uncommons. If you are bulking out a collection like this on eBay use the medium boxes and sell them in lots of 3500 or whatever you can comfortably fit in the medium box. Try to get enough value in the box to get bids up, otherwise people will just calculate thier bulk price and subtract the shipping leaving you a couple bucks for your trouble.

If you can get them get the 13x11x3 medium flat rate boxes instead. It will hold 3 stacks of MTG cards side by side and you can even squeeze in a pair of 1k count white card boxes if you want to keep them organized inside. I've started wrapping my cards in manageable stacks of celophane. If you are doing a small shipment or a one time deal the stuff you can buy in the grocery store is fine, otherwise they sell rolls of it in office depot for a reasonable price. This keeps the cards from sliding around and getting folded inside the box.

The question about when is it not beneficial to ship first class anymore is about 12 ounces. You can use a large bubble mailer for this type of package but make sure the cards are secure inside. Keep in mind that you get free delivery confirmation on priority mail using paypal, but you have to pay for it if you don't buy online. (0.80).

2) Delivery Confirmation/Tracking is more important than insurance. As Doug said it's hard to get the P.O. to pay a claim because you have to prove worth. I'll insure stuff I can prove worth on easily and usually set the bar at boxes worth about $100. Delivery Confirmation is cheeper and still keeps the theives honest. I generally mark my packages as "Trading Cards" which also keeps you free of a host of customs implications if you put "Magic Cards". Nearly every customs dept in Eastern Europe that I've dealt with for example will return "Magic Cards" since Tarot style cards are banned for import there.

3) International Shipping is more of a hastle than it should be. IMO the U.S. is way behind when it comes to reliable international shipping options. I've heard it costs something like $4 to register a package in Asia, but it costs $14 or so here in the U.S. For this reason U.S. sellers/traders either a.)don't ship internationally, b.)require expensive registered mail which makes it unafordable to international customers, or c.) they just overcharge for shipping and assume some of the risk that way.

Considering upwards of 50% of my cards go out of the country this is business I don't want to loose. I've used all three in the past depending on the venue and my stomach for risk.

1. It is cheap.

2. The post office does not know what a magic card is. I have anecdotally heard that the PO is very hard to get to actually make good on an insurance claim. They will try to reimburse you for the cost of a new pack of magic cards. If they ask what's inside, I usually say baseball cards.

3. If you are selling to dealers, insure. I knew of one dealer who is no longer in business that would say that the PO "lost" boxes that he did get that didn't have insurance. He would then resell the cards at no cost to him. I think the $2 is a good way to keep small-timers honest.

Foils weigh slightly more, but I lack 1000 foils to weigh : ) If in doubt, remove them beforehand and weigh!

Older cards and newer cards weigh basically the same. Since most collections are mixed up anyway, it would be of less use to find out how much the weight difference is.

The thing about insurance is whenever you are paying for it you usually won't need it but it will be that one time that you don't have it that you will wish to hell you did. If you are seriously getting into a shipping dependent oppurtunity, you might want to see what your acceptable loss threshold. This is where you set the bar for your venture for where the cost of insurance outweighs the potential loss of product. Running a business without insurance is like gambling, and in gambling, you never gamble with what you can't afford to lose.

Do you have any idea how small a shipment would have to be to warrant traditional postage?

I'm curious what everyone here does for insurance. Do you fully insure? If it's under a certain value do you skip it?

I believe that foils both weigh heavier and are a little thinker than regular cards. Would love to see those numbers as well. In all, very good resource, thanks for taking the time to write this up.