eBay

barbse14 · ‎09-15-2020

So I'm trying to sell hockey cards. I'd be using a bubble letter and it would have 8"x4" dimensions.

It would weight 200 grams. The cheapest way to sell it across the country would cost me 17.50$, why it's such a small parcel?

msmaggie060 · ‎09-15-2020

If you send it using untracked Lettermail and it weighs under 200 grams and is no more than 2cm thick you can send it for $3.60 Cdn. Under 100 grams you can stick a 1.94 stamp on it. No tracking though so no way to prove delivery.

ypdc_dennis · ‎09-15-2020

Canada Post parcel rates start with a weight range of up to 750g. So light weights are at a disadvantage. Expedited parcel includes tracking and $100 of insurance. Sign up for Canada Post's free Solutions for Small Business membership for some shipping discounts.

A cheaper alternative is to send using oversize lettermail (under 2cm thick).

100g ... $1.94 + tax

200g ... $3.19 + tax

300g ... $4.44 + tax

400g ... $5.09 + tax

500g ... $5.47 + tax

No tracking or insurance for those prices. Flat rate price for all of Canada. Some types of sales are more risky with this method.

For less risk, you can add Registered to oversize lettermail for $9.75 on top of the regular cost. Registered mail in Canada has proof of delivery and $100 of insurance.

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/personal/sending/letters-mail/registered-mail.page

-..-

femmefan1946 · ‎09-15-2020

Note that Registered Mail is only useful in Canada.

It will not track on international shipments, including shipments to the USA.

And it is often slower than Expedited Shipping which is available to us with our Solutions for Small Business number.

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/business/small-business.page?

However.

There is no point in tracking a low-value item.

You have to decide for yourself what is "low value" for you.

The only use for tracking is as the defense against claims of non-delivery. It will not speed delivery and it does not prevent damage in transit.

I am a strong proponent of Cookie Jar Insurance.

Which is simply putting aside a few virtual pennies from each sale in a virtual Cookie Jar as an insurance premium against possible problems.

Those problems are not just loss or damage in the mail, but also your own errors, like inadequate packaging or bad descriptions. (I know, but we all have bad days.)

You might also want to reconsider using expensive bubble envelopes. If your cards are in those hard plastic holders, fine, but bubble envelopes can be bent and you are better off with a cardboard (or Corplast) stiffener .

For most purposes, using a waterproof poly envelope, a stiffener, and LetterPost will reduce your costs, arrive promptly and cause no problems.

And Canada Post went metric in 1974. Any measures other than metric will allow errors in calculation.

If you don't already have a digital scale, I would recommend the Starfrit kitchen scales from Canadian Tire for under $20 which will handle up to five kilos.

femmefan1946 · ‎09-15-2020

The actual rates are 92c for under 30 grams. $1.30 for under 50 grams, $1.54 for under 100 gr. and $3,19 for under 200gr.

That's what will be on the envelope.

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/personal/sending/letters-mail/postage-rates.page

Stamps have a service charge added if you buy them one at a time., but booklets of 10 or more do not have a service charge .

You will also be charged GST if the envelope is shipping domestically, but not internationally.

Shipping is the hardest part of selling by mail order, and online is just mail order in a party dress.

mcrlmn · ‎09-15-2020

A few years ago I sold a complete 1977 Topps Glossy Inserts card set.
Only 22 cards, but the P.O. wanted over $16+ to mail it because of thickness.

Not gonna happen, so I opened and repacked the order, splitting the deck of cards into 2, making the envelope thinner.
Canada Postage was reduced to $2.80.

ilikehockeyjerseys · ‎09-16-2020

As others have said, if you can keep it under 2CMs, you can get lettermail rates, which means it will cost around 3.60 to send a 200 gram bubble mailer. Oversized lettermail can be up to 14.9 x 10.6 inches, so if these are cards in toploaders, you can use a larger bubble mailer to reduce thickness.

If you use lettermail, you expose yourself to risk as a seller. How eBay works, is that it is up to the seller to prove with tracking that the package arrived. It is not up to the buyer to prove that it did not arrive. So if there is no tracking, and the buyer claims the package did not arrive, you have to give a full refund whether or not the buyer is being honest.

To put things in perspective, I sell untracked in Canada, and in the last 90 or so days I've only had 2 buyers out of hundreds where their packages did not arrive within 30 or so days. That's probably out of maybe 450+ untracked shipments.

So you have to look at tracked shipping as insurance, and decide what your level of risk tolerance is. Different selling categories are going to have different levels of fraud, ranging from very little, to very high. Even if your charge a buyer for tracked shipping, that is still money coming out of your pocket. If a card is wroth 50 dollars, you can only charge 50 dollars for it, not 50+15 shipping, because then you're asking 65 dollars, which is more than it's worth. You can either charge 50 w/ free shipping, 48+2 lettermail shipping, or 35+15 tracked shipping. If you charge the first two, you increase your margin by roughly 13 dollars. Multiply this by however many sales you expect on average, and that added shipping cost is effectively your cost of insurance. If you plan to sell 10 cards a month, for tracked shipping to make sense, you have to lose more than 130 dollars worth of cards to item not received claims.

Of course, even if you decide as a rule that you won't pay for tracking to insure yourself against item not received claims, you might decide to deviate from the rule for expensive cards that are above a certain price point because the risk of sending a $300 card untracked is much greater than the risk of sending a $30 card untracked. You can also click a buyer's profile and view both the feedback they have received, and more importantly, the feedback they have left for others. While buyers can only receive positive feedback, occasionally a buyer will receive a positive feedback, with a negative comment. As far as feedback left for others goes, it doesn't always tell you if a buyer is going to be trouble, but in rare cases what they leave for other people will make it obvious. I once saw a buyer who left 15 negative feedbacks in under a month where they claimed their 15 different items from 15 different sellers were damaged. So you can sometimes see spot problem buyers that way.

An alternative would be to send your cards into COMC.com. They can post them on eBay for you or you can sell them directly on their site. You may not get as much for your cards, and they also will not sell as quickly. There is less risk and time involved though.

ilikehockeyjerseys · ‎09-16-2020

Generally, most post offices will try to up sell like crazy, even if you're already compliant with lettermail.

To test your mail thickness, you can buy a lettermail slot either from Canada Post's website, or from sellers on eBay. With that said, at the sorting level, Canada Post seems to be fairly liberal about the 2CM limit.

If a seller is doing any sort of volume, it is much faster overall to buy bulk stamps, and deposit mail into a local box. Which I hate to say, because the people at my post office are really nice!

mcrlmn · ‎09-16-2020

Yup, uh-huh, I know.

Here's one for you...
It's cheaper to buy a roll of stamps at Costco than at the post office.

snoopwiz · ‎09-16-2020

Here's one for you...
It's cheaper to buy a roll of stamps at Costco than at the post office.

It is even cheaper to buy stamps from eBay sellers, some of whom frequent this board. Ask me how I know.

ilikehockeyjerseys · ‎09-16-2020

How do you know?

travis7s · ‎09-16-2020

Its something like $88 for stamps at Costco vs $92 at the post office but I'm not sure if Costco adds pst/hst on that?

Also Costco online is a great place to get bubble mailers. I believe its cheaper than anything on Uline/Amazon/ebay and shipping is free and they are actually top brand mailers.

femmefan1946 · ‎09-16-2020

@ilikehockeyjerseys

You'd have to send snoopwiz an eBay Message for that. Or me. It is bad form to advertise on the Boards.

Costco would be remitting tax, but they may include it in their price, just as Free Shipping means the price includes the cost of shipping.

One of the perks of subscribing to a Store is the quarterly coupon for eBay branded shipping supplies. I know they appear over priced and they would be if you actually paid for them, but 100 poly bubble envelopes for the $7.00 shipping fee (after the coupon) is a pretty good deal.

Always look at the bottom line and don't worry too much about how you got there.

travis7s · ‎09-17-2020

I like the eBay #0 bubbles, they are great for video games and DVDs as they are thin enough to almost always fit through the lettermail slot and I can get them for around $0.17 each with my Basic store coupon. The #4 eBay ones are not so great, way too floppy in my opinion. For bigger mailers I prefer the kraft/manilla style.