Best practices shipping $1000+ card overseas

[RufussCkingston]

Sold a card for over $1k, but international address (going through eBay Intl shipping), so no eBay Authentication protection. What would be best practices to limit potential shenanigans? I guess I can videotape the packaging, but not like that prevents me switching it out after. Any other suggestions?

[JeffG1954]

Originally Posted by RufussCkingston

Sold a card for over $1k, but international address (going through eBay Intl shipping), so no eBay Authentication protection. What would be best practices to limit potential shenanigans? I guess I can videotape the packaging, but not like that prevents me switching it out after. Any other suggestions?

Pretty sure your only responsibility is to get it safely to the US hub....after that you are off the hook. So....ship with signature required, which I think eBay will auto add in, package as you would any high end card shipping to the US, and let it go. The INTL portion of the shipping is on eBay.

[anusinha]

yeah, ebay international is real easy, just send it to the international hub and then you're off the hook.

edit: International shipping from the US is easy but I'm not sure how interplanetary shipping from Uranus goes, youll have to ask ebay about that one.

[oddstuff]

Originally Posted by JeffG1954

Pretty sure your only responsibility is to get it safely to the US hub....after that you are off the hook. So....ship with signature required, which I think eBay will auto add in, package as you would any high end card shipping to the US, and let it go. The INTL portion of the shipping is on eBay.

This is correct. Just need to make sure you get that package to eBay international HQ in Illinois. After that, the rest of the shipping process is on eBay. The buyer had to pay additional shipping fees to eBay to ensure secured shipping from eBay to the buyer.

[RufussCkingston]

Thanks for the input. I know with the eBay international program they handle the returns and deal with selling it off. Just curious if they actually open the packages at the freight forwarder. I always assume that they just put a new label on it and throw them in a bag/box and ship them to the destination country to enter the mail stream there. Fortunately it's a good feedback buyer, so I'm not too concerned.

[towerymt]

^ I don't know the answer, but I had assumed re-package. Ebay would want to rule out damage or incorrect card shipped from seller, since ebay handles returns. They really must be verifying the card is correct and not broken....I assume.

[RufussCkingston]

Originally Posted by towerymt

^ I don't know the answer, but I had assumed re-package. Ebay would want to rule out damage or incorrect card shipped from seller, since ebay handles returns. They really must be verifying the card is correct and not broken....I assume.

But keep in mind that this is not a card specific service, it is generic for almost all eBay categories. Imagine packages with a lot of pieces or even sealed items. This forwarder probably isn't really capable of verifying anything...

[oddstuff]

My guess is that they put the package into a larger package after checking that the initial package exhibit no damage. Then they put a shipping label along with the customs stuff onto the new package.

[ChaseUA]

They do open to ensure the package is intact. I’ve had a friend whose package was damaged in transit to the eBay global shipping and he had to issue a refund as eBay returned it to him, the card was mangled - appeared usps allowed the bubble mailer to get put throw a sorting machine or ran over by one of their semis a few times.

[PoPCulture]

I think I can help here. I sold a $1,400 card to a German buyer about 2 months ago. Buyer paid and it shipped to the International shipping center without going through eBay authentication. After it was received at the shipping center the day after I shipped it, the card disappeared from the face of the earth. I believe it was likely stolen by someone there but I guess that’s no longer my concern. The buyer opened a case about 3 weeks after tracking stopped. He was very nice in communications with me and I was very responsive to his questions. It took 10 days for eBay to close the case by refunding the buyer without any penalty to me but it did really suck to have the funds held for that long with no money from sales going to the bank for that period. The worst part is that the card will never be in the hands of the collector that really needed it.

Make sure you select signature confirmation if going through USPS. Also, use overnight for peace of mind…it’s well worth it.

[Gary]

Originally Posted by RufussCkingston

But keep in mind that this is not a card specific service, it is generic for almost all eBay categories. Imagine packages with a lot of pieces or even sealed items. This forwarder probably isn't really capable of verifying anything...

Sold several overseas cards thru ebay,i think they actually open and verify the item matches what was sold.how else could they assume all the risk going forward?once the ebay seller gets it to ebays overseas shipping the seller is out of it.

By now if they were not checking some asshat would be shipping empty cracked slabs.

[bloodwings19]

Originally Posted by anusinha

yeah, ebay international is real easy, just send it to the international hub and then you're off the hook.

Back then, eBay didn't have shipping to the US hub. I lost 3 packages to European (Italy, Germany) thieves. I stopped shipping outside US for a long time until they changed it to eBay Int. On my eBay sell page I only ship to US (48 States).