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Selling some old stuff and a unit of guys will be traveling from Iowa to New York. Wondering means of postage and shipping one would reccomend for such a journey.

 AduroT wrote:
Selling some old stuff and a unit of guys will be traveling from Iowa to New York. Wondering means of postage and shipping one would reccomend for such a journey.

I tend to wrap big things in bubble wrap, wrap figures in a small bit of bubble wrap taped closed, occasionally I then put those in a ziploc bag (that way if any damage should occur, all the bits are still together). And then I put them in a box and fill with packing peanuts, and then basically cover the damn thing in packing tape (that gak's like power armor )

I most recently sent a 8 unpainted metal miniatures sellotaped to half of a long piece of corrugated card, this was then sandwiched with some bits of bubblewrap (with the non miniatures half folded back over and taped down). This was then neatly slid into an A5 padded envelope. Cheap and secure.

Most the stuff I get comes in boxes stuffed with bubble wrap.

However it is sent it needs to be unable to move around (ergo lots of bubble wrap) and kept away from the sides of the package if possible.

Individually wrap and bubble wrap figures.
Bag them all.
Box with peanuts.

Before sealing up with tape, take the closed box and SHAKE hard.

If it rattles, you haven't packed it well enough - not enough packing/voidfill. Add more.

Seal with tape.

Weigh, add postage and send.

I've sent GW apocalypse acrylic templates by mail that have arrived intact. They were bubblewrapped and in a box with voidfill. Figures are a walk in the cake compared to that.

Movement is the enemy of model transportation, because the box is going to get loaded onto trucks, knocked around, jostled, rattled, and anything that can float around the box is going to get bounced off the top, bottom, and sides until it's broken into its component pieces. So 1: you want to have the model itself padded, and 2:you want enough packing material around it so that it can't bounce around.

Don't use a box that can barely hold the model. To cite a personal example, if you ship a monolith in a box that it touching every side tightly, there's no room for cushioning. Every blow that box takes, like dropping onto a conveyor, is going end up hitting the model straight on through the side if it's crammed in there.

What means do you use for the actual shipping? Just the normal postage service? I don't generally mail anything so it's a lot of the postage stuff I don't know about.

I use the good old usps all my swap shop stuff is done via that.

I use industrial pluck-foam trays, packing peanuts/bubble wrap, and thick foam sheets. Works a treat, and a large 12" x 13" tray only costs $6. Plus, you can use the foam left over from plucking out the trays to pad the models!

~Tim?

Bubble wrap(sometimes an old foam tray wrapped in cellophane) & peanuts(sometimes crumpled up phone book pages). Test seal up the box. Shake the crap out of it to make sure nothing will come loose. Really seal up the box, shake again for fun, then I weigh the package and see if it's cheaper to ship flat rate or actual weight.

When I shipped out my dark eldar and tyranid armies a while back i hot glued the smaller units( a small dab unter the base ring, not the outside) to a piece of cardboard cut to size, then put packing peanuts between those, did that for 3 layers. and shipped it. To my knowledge they made it fine, the receiving party didn't tell me of any complaints so I guess it worked well.

your box should be at least 1 inch larger than the item you wish to ship after you have wrapped it in padding.

you should have atleast 1 inch of padding on all sides as your box at any given time can be sitting on any side.

you can also use crumpled paper and i find it works better than peanuts as it has more give.