Shipping Cards

Proper card packaging is important, and the mark of a careful and considerate trader. In the following we will suggest a set of guidelines to follow to ensure the safety of the cards you send. Each chapter deals with preventing one type of damage that your cards may suffer.

A very important note (as explained below in point 5) is that when you send cards, you should use a form of tracking.

1. Scratching

Scratching and other forms of surface damage to individual cards can be easily prevented by putting the cards inside soft (penny) sleeves. Do not try to cram more than 3 cards in a soft sleeve. Specially valuable cards should be put in a sleeve by themselves.

2. Bending

When sending 3 or less cards, place their sleeve into a top loader. More cards should be divided into sets of 3, of which 2 sets will go into top loaders. The rest will be placed sandwiched between the top loaders.

3. Sliding

Since top loaders are open ended, we need a way to prevent cards from sliding out. For this, we tape them at the ends. To prevent the card edges coming in contact with the tape, the best way is to use another penny sleeve, as seen below.

4. General damage in transit

Finally, put the packed cards in a bubble mailer or secure envelope, and drop that in the mail.

5. Fraud

Our rules (as well as the ones on most other trading communities) place the responsibility of delivery upon the sender. To be properly protected against traders denying that they received the cards, the best way is to use tracking / delivery confirmation.

6. Lost mail

As we all know, when trading over mail, packages get lost from time to time. For this reason, when doing large value trades (in excess of 100$), we advise you to use insurance. That way if the mail gets lost, the post will reinburse you.

References