PSA: TRADING BETWEEN US AND CANADA (Page 1 of 2)

Heh, as soon as you ship a bubble mailer to Canada, it's going to require a LOT more than a stamp or two, I recommend keeping it to envelopes if you can. At the post office, it's $7 to ship the Canada in a bubble mailer - also, remember that you need to fill out the customs form for those.

Agreed.  I just tried to ship a bubble mailer as a "large envelope" for $2+, we'll see if it gets returned to me due to lack of customs form.

What are these "international stamps" you speak of? The last time I shipped to Canada it was a bubble mailer and when they rang it up it was $5 and some change.

And the last time I tried to send an envelope they wouldn't let me because the envelope was too small to put the customs form on. But you are telling me I can buy bigger envelopes and put a $1 stamp on it and be good?

I've never had to fill out a customs form for a plain white envelope... I use the $0.86 stamps, stick it in my mailbox and let it go Of course this is for 1-3 cards in a top loader, so nothing to big or heavy.

Over 200 successful trades with the US here.

I'm responding to this one because this highlights the biggest problem of shipping from the US to Canada; the variance. From what I've determined as a receiver, there is FAR less oversight and consistency than the USPS actually suggests. Sometimes you can put $0.80 on a bubble mailer and be fine, sometimes you have to put $7 on a PWE.

The postage required is determined by the size/weight/thickness of the package. A plain envelope with singles in it can ship as regular mail, but if you stack your cards in one thick pile, or have too many in the envelope, the extra dimensions bump the postage up to a small parcel, which does add significantly. I recommend just biting the bullet and going directly to a post office; yes, it's annoying, but surely a bit of effort is worth having hundreds of new people to trade with.

In general, you won't have to fill out a customs form unless you're sending a parcel, and using a bubble mailer is the easiest way for them to identify that.

Having an issue with tracking basically means you have an issue with trust.  If that's the problem, just have your partner send first.  Statistically speaking, the probability of your letter being lost in the mail is infinitesimal.

Hmmm well I find this all very interesting. I will have to try again and do a relatively small trade to Canada and see if any of this works out better than it has in the past. I ALWAYS go to the PO in person and I have asked if there was a cheaper way to do it, but I guess they didn't want to tell me about it or didn't know.

So... who wants to do a trade?

Yes, some of us do have an issue trusting people on the internet that have the power of anonymity behind them.  Having the other person ship first does nothing as far as Deckbox is concerned, all they need to do is claim that they never got them, open a Bad Trade Report, and then your trade reputation is tarnished forever, unless you have proof that the cards arrived there, AKA Delivery Confirmation.

I've done smaller trades to Canada without too many issues, but I have very well founded hesitation in shipping anything worth any significant amount of money to a place where I have no ability to prove my case.  I can just as easily be out a large amount of money in that case, because I'll either need to ship back the cards that they sent me, or take a hit to my reputation and possibly risk getting disallowed from trading altogether if I refuse to do so.

I'm actually a very trusting guy, sometimes to a fault.  I've had trades go wrong in both directions and it all has ended amicably, without any issues.  But just having "Trust" isn't worth it to me when I have literally zero chance of protecting myself from getting screwed, be that by the post office or an individual.

I wish for the life of me I could find the study, but an investigation done about 10ish years ago had something like the following for USPS:

5% of mail does not reach sender, of that
- 3% is returned to sender
- 1% is forwarded
- 1% is discarded

It's not exact, but you're looking at roughly 1% of mail being trashed.  This is including mail that is a) illegible, and b) not given a "return address", c) sent by incompetent people.  this was over 10 years ago, not sure if things have gotten worse or better, but losing 3 packages of 186 is definitely higher than average.

that's not really the point though.  were these trades all lost because they were international (if they were all international)? or just because of bad luck?  the point i'm trying to make with this (albeit i didn't know alot of these annoying policies of the US mail system) is that even though it's a little more work for trades involving lots of cards, you aren't really increasing your exposure to loss by trading to canada.

Yesterday, I shipped a #000 bubble mailer with 4 cards in 2 toploaders from Canada going to the US from the post office. It weighed 32g and it cost me 2.65$ as it was apparently a light packet (up to 100g) to the US. I've looked around the Canada Post site and for an item to be considered letter mail, it need to be maximum 5mm thich, so there's no way the bubble mailer can qualify. I've also been told by Canada Post on the phone that there is no way I can send my bubble mailer myself in a mailbox, I always have to go to the post office so they can weigh it. So basically:

Toploader in a plain white envelope Canada -> US: 1.10$ for < 30g, 1.34$ for 30g to 50g
Bubble mailer Canada -> US: 2.65$ for under 100g but you have to go to the post office.

Deleting posts on a rant, masquerading as a "PSA"...

Really? I was simply educating you on.. well.. common sense.
Either way, I think the point got across.

I have had several deals in Canada from the US (me) and a couple was $100+. I don't send into Canada unless the deal is worth while. I would rather not spend $7 and fill out the customs form, but it does depend on the deal. There is a couple that I have dealt with that sends quickly. A couple actually did wait til my cards showed first (due to low feedback rating), but did get my cards and got theirs.

With any deal, I expect the cards to be not delivered for 5-7 days (nationally) and 14-21 days (internationally). I have the time and patience and don't worry about it.

Best suggestion is that if you send like I do, make the deal worth your while and expect them not to appear until the week after you make the deal. This way you do NOT feel panicky about them not showing up and actually do feel good when they finally show up.