Selling & Shipping large boxed board games?

[Wyrmalla]

How do folks go about packing and shipping large boxed board games?

I've a pile of old games, but have been hesitant to sell them on account of shipping costs. Is this the sort of thing where customers are expected to eat the cost, or that you just don't sell at all, barring at local shows.

Looking at Royal Mail shipping costs, for the UK alone its a minimum fee of £12. For Europe that goes up to £20-£40, and I hesitate to look at what it would be further affield. To me that just doesn't seem all that viable as far as gaining customer interest.

I suppose the main thing would be selling items which do tend to net a decent price. Otherwise if the customer's paying more in shipping than the item I just don't see the point. :/

[pixelgeek]

I sell locally unless they are small and light. Far too expensive now.

[has.been]

Mention what you have, here on LAF & where-abouts you are.
 Some-one local might pop over to get them.

[Elbows]

Before listing them, establish what the shipping costs are.  You can box/measure/weigh them and get an idea beforehand.

If you're in the US - it's going to be a ton.  Shipping over 13 oz. must go priority and anything over 12" (any dimension) incurs additional cost.  Businesses have large contracts with shipping companies to reduce this, but the lay person can expect to pay $15-25+ for an average board game going stateside.

[pixelgeek]

If you're in the US - it's going to be a ton.

I am not sure about the UK but it is a ton everywhere :-)

There are also so many postal disruptions at the moment, especially in the US, that I wouldn't risk shipping anything. Most deliveries that I am hearing about are taking longer than the complaint time limit at Paypal and via credit cards which means that you are going to see a lot of people registering complaints to get their payments back

[Wyrmalla]

Damn, I completely forgot about the whole sabotage of the USPS which is ongoing. Shipping to America seemed to start at £23, £40+ with tracking. I haven't looked into the value of these games, but wouldn't want to be sending them with tracking - at least for my own piece of mind.

Right, thanks all. I think the way to go then is just to list them, but have a caveat about high shipping costs - maybe with a few examples for rough guidelines. There's no immediacy to this on account of going through and seeing how complete the sets are, and finding any bits which have been lost over the years in my loft (I know I've seen some Space Crusade cards in the insulation...).

Usually I'd try and sell this thing at my club. But that has no restarting date currently, and I wouldn't expect to make as much there as I would be online to be honest.

[Emir of Askaristan]

There are a few ways of shipping heavier items. I sent a load of books via a courier firm to a mate in the uk and it was much cheaper than the equivalent Royal Mail parcels cost. They arrived next day too!

[fred]

Yes, using services like my Hermes and the like we often send 5kg boxes of boxes to my niece, for around £5. It would be around £15 by Royal Mail.

[fastolfrus]

I'm very wary of Hermes - the local ones are an absolute shambles for either non-delivery, or dropping/dumping/throwing stuff over fences etc. If I buy anything on ebay now and the sender says they will send via Hermes I tell them to keep the cash and re-list the item because it's just not worth the hassle.
Might be ok if you go overboard on the packing, but I had a large fragile item thrown over a 2m high fence (and despite 3 layers of bubble wrap it still came out like a jigsaw), also had books drop-kicked into a pond (couldn't see how else they would have got that far), and a parcel put into the wheelie-bin whilst it was out for bin collection day....
 

[fastolfrus]

Mention what you have, here on LAF & where-abouts you are.
 Some-one local might pop over to get them.

Second that as the first option to take - you might not need to post at all that way.

[Polkovnik]

Use a courier like Hermes (if you're worried about damage you can pay a bit extra for insurance). It's much cheaper for larger parcels (anything over 2kg or bigger than small / medium parcel sizes). If you're selling on ebay the buyer pays postage, and you can use their global shipping program for overseas (basically they sort it out and if it sells overseas you post it to a UK depot).