The Yak Shack Forum

 ;DJust brought a great hermione card (pink top) from lickorish spider, excelent card, well packaged and took just 4 days from USA!!!!    Thanx very much, great service and real nice bloke! ;D

Aw Shucks, Ma'am.   :)

I'm glad you liked the card.

The postage only cost  $US 2.40, (Yes, I paid it.), airmail. The package weighed 2.6 ounces, a lot of bubble wrap and a screwdown holder.

How come it cost so much from the other direction??? (Like £5.00- £10.00,  as some of you know.) I must admit thought that if I had insured it it would have cost another $US 16.00 plus the insurance fee. I smell post office rippin' us off.

[Rhetorical question...no answer expected]

I know you didn't expect a response, but you're quite right in your assumption of a 'rip-off' for those of us wanting to send stuff abroad.
It's not exactly cheap to post stuff inland either ... and I'm referring to the insured postage here.
Count yourselves lucky in the US because you can use those great Global Priority mailers for a flat fee to send pretty much whatever you'd like ... I think that's a brilliant idea!
Why can't we have something as good as that here in the UK?

*another rhetorical question btw!*

Yeah it costs around £1.50 to post a properly packaged card to the US from the UK.

But insured postage to the States??? Ick - only if it's a very good card is it worth it ;) I remember the jitters I had when I posted a PearTree to the states - I could only put $1000 insurance on it  ::)

Did you put the insurance on it. Thats alot of money. But for that card I would to...if I had the money to put that on it. Wait, did you have to put the money on it that the person sent you?

Well I posted some cards the other day to the states and it cost £1.31 but goodness knows when they will actually get there  ::)

I had to return a couple of cards I received damaged from a seller in the US as I wanted them both replacing and he requested I send them back to him .... and it cost me close to £10 to do it because I wanted them insured and a signature so I would know when they'd arrived!! Outrageous!! >:(

Not good  >:(

you guys should try posting from Australia to the UK or US .

I think that is how our post offices make there moneylol

That's not the half of it!
If the idiot I bought them from used soft sleeves before placing the cards in the hard toploaders, then neither of them would've stuck to the inside would they?! :o Yes ... that's what happened!!!
I was disgusted and could've wept when I saw what he'd done and I had to take a pair of scissors to the plastic and cut the damn holders to get them out!! :o :-[
So, the cards AND the holders were returned and I got decent packaging when their replacements were sent back to me. Bloody awful person to deal with too and I hope never to deal with them again .... :(

You are kidding right? Just shoved into the toploader without a sleeve??? :o

What kind of card was it? An autograph/prop/costume?

Nope ... not kidding!! :(
They were ROTKU Arwen and Elrond Costume Cards rammed straight into hard toploaders. :'(
When I opened the packet my heart sank when I saw he'd done this. :-[
So folks, even though it might seem a needless fiddle to use the soft sleeves inside the toploaders ... they really do help protect your cards.

I've received cards packed that way, too.  Fortunately, nothing was damaged, although I think I removed the cards and protected them properly with lightning speed!

A lot of people who sell cards on eBay aren't true collectors or dealers -- they see cards as a way to make some quick money and don't bother to learn how to correctly handle them.

I notice that most of the cards that I receive in hard toploaders are in soft sleeves and then the toploaders are sello(? We say Scotch taped) taped shut.  :)
However the openiing of the soft sleeve is oriented so that its opening allows the card to slide out and the edge of the card comes into contact with the tape. If the tape stickes to the edge it makes the edge nappy when you pull it loose.   :'(   :'(   :'(    
I'd like to suggest that when using tape to seal a toploader with a card in a soft sleeve that the sleeve opening goes into the top loader first.
Then the tape sticks to the sleeve instead of the card.   :) Sellers note. :)

Or they could just forget about the scotch (cello) tape and pop the toploader into a team bag like I do!  It's a lot easier to remove the card too.

Good tips both of them ... ;)
I think you'll find that the team bags aren't so readily available here in the UK as they are in the US Anna and that's why people resort to using sellotape across the opening.

Oh, I wasn't aware team bags were scarce in the UK.  Well then if the seller uses cello tape, they should add a small piece of paper over the open end of the toploader before applying the tape.  Then the toploader edge won't be sticky when you cut it open.  :)

Time to 'hang my head in shame' again time.  What is a team bag?  
As an English lass my knowledge only extends to tea bags :D

Seriously never seen one (I don't think so anyway).

Is it one of those small clear bags with a self adhesive flap i get trades in occasionally? They'd come in very handy if i could find some over here...

Well if this is a team bag my big brother has just smuggly informed me that he can get them ::)

Trouble is when I said where, I just got a vague ' at conventions'.  So now we know ;D

Well that's cleared that little mystery up nicely! ;D :P