TOPIC: Shipping Advice

I'm going to be selling off most of my collection soon, and I'm looking for some advice on how to ship tokens. I'm looking for the best/easiest/cheapest way to ship tokens.

I have a bunch of small flat rate boxes sitting. Are those worth using?

Any advice is welcome.

A medium flat rate box will hold 6 small flat rate boxes.
A small flat rate box will hold roughly 175 tokens.
Use a lot of tape when sealing up the box. No, more than that.
USPS Flat rate is probably the most cost effective. Unless you can arrange a in person hand off.
Use more tape on the box.

Grizwald wrote: A medium flat rate box will hold 6 small flat rate boxes.
A small flat rate box will hold roughly 175 tokens.
Use a lot of tape when sealing up the box. No, more than that.
USPS Flat rate is probably the most cost effective. Unless you can arrange a in person hand off.
Use more tape on the box.

Agreed with this.

In terms of taping I've never had a problem with:

Double wrapping the entire box in clear packing tape, e.g.:

1. Lay the box flat, begin wrapping around the sides in a spiral until the entire 4 outside walls are totally covered.

2. Place the box on its side, repeat the procedure.

3. Rotate the box 90 degrees to different side, repeat the procedure.

At the end each box face will have 2 layers of tape, perpendicular to each other, that totally cover the face.

You can use reinforced strapping tape too, but that's overkill.

Cost wise, a flat rate medium box will cost you $15-20 to ship, a flat rate small box $7-10.

If you have slightly more material that can fit in a medium be aware of the large flat rate boxes too, those cost a few bucks more to ship and are around 50% larger than the medium flat rate box.

Make sure you get the top loading version of the medium flat rate box, not the side loading version.

I agree with the above. Taping a box when shipping is like dice, you can never have enough.

don't forget signature confirmation and tracking. insurance is recommended.

Thanks for the advice so far.

If you are shipping small amounts, I suggest the small flat rate box. You can also use small padded or bubble envelopes for small amounts, but put plenty of tape on the edges (I have received an envelope years ago with a token size puncture on one of the seams). And whichever you ship in, put the tokens in a ziplock baggie.
To avoid any issues, I put tokens in a ziplock, then tape the zip part to the inside of the flat rate box, fold the baggie over and tape it to the box again along all edges of the baggie...at this point, even if the box rips apart, there is a ziplock bag of tokens sealed between tape and a piece of cardboard with shipping info. I do still put some tape on the outside of the box, but not as much as the big boxes require.

Of course, small amounts of tokens in a flat rate box only makes sense for expensive tokens (at least to me...I suppose others might be willing to spend $7 to ship $10 of tokens)
Also, when selling a large number of tokens, you start to spend a lot of time dealing with many transactions. If you value your time enough, it is worth offering a significant discount on buying the whole lot. Shipping will be much cheaper overall, but you will likely have to offer a discount much more than those savings to get a buyer; time saved is the benefit here. And if shipping a lot, others have covered how to pack those large flat rate boxes.

Matthew Hayward wrote: be aware of the large flat rate boxes too, those cost a few bucks more to ship and are around 50% larger than the medium flat rate box.

Also be aware that, when full, LFRBs are very heavy. Unless you're willing to do the work to give it lots of internal support AND you tape the ever-loving 💩 out of it, my personal recommendation is to avoid LFRBs. Nearly every LFRB we receive is damaged.