war-digs-it
Hero Member
- Feb 16, 2013
- 711
- 389
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
Sometimes I really hate buying something when I put little thought into how the shipping of the item is going to be a factor...
I buy the largest boxes that I can at Home Depot to use as material and have a junk air hockey table that I use as my cutting table. I turn on the stereo and do some calculations on the overall size of the item adding a couple inches on all measurements or more depending on the fragility of the piece. Fine pottery and glass is usually double boxed and padded and really is not hard to ship.
Some items I buy are such strangely shaped that the box requires almost all space with the item taking very little and of course these items seem to nearly always be the most fragile.
Lamps with shades seem to fit in this category often. I shipped a wonderful and wildly shaped 5 footer that needed to have the shade shipped separately to Arizona from Georgia that cost $230 in UPS shipping cost alone. I still made good money on that one but not what I thought I was going to.
Here is my latest lamp getting ready for shipping, not sold yet but will. As you can see it's a cone shaped base with a lot of articulating arm, very fragile and can not just be tossed in a box with some paper and survive the trip. Of course this is just the bones or "framing", now the bubble wrap and packing paper will come in to fill the voids and immobilize the piece completely.
This type of packing has given me a great success rate, I don't know what you do but I would like to hear about your techniques or ideas.
I buy the largest boxes that I can at Home Depot to use as material and have a junk air hockey table that I use as my cutting table. I turn on the stereo and do some calculations on the overall size of the item adding a couple inches on all measurements or more depending on the fragility of the piece. Fine pottery and glass is usually double boxed and padded and really is not hard to ship.
Some items I buy are such strangely shaped that the box requires almost all space with the item taking very little and of course these items seem to nearly always be the most fragile.
Lamps with shades seem to fit in this category often. I shipped a wonderful and wildly shaped 5 footer that needed to have the shade shipped separately to Arizona from Georgia that cost $230 in UPS shipping cost alone. I still made good money on that one but not what I thought I was going to.
Here is my latest lamp getting ready for shipping, not sold yet but will. As you can see it's a cone shaped base with a lot of articulating arm, very fragile and can not just be tossed in a box with some paper and survive the trip. Of course this is just the bones or "framing", now the bubble wrap and packing paper will come in to fill the voids and immobilize the piece completely.
This type of packing has given me a great success rate, I don't know what you do but I would like to hear about your techniques or ideas.
