You know your product and clients more than I do, so you could be right. I still would suggest you give same-day UPS shipping a try and see how it works out, but I understand why you would see it as the wrong move.
My logic is that anybody who thinks $10 is excessive for shipping is already priced out at $10 so they become irrelevant. You can't successfully market to them with $10 shipping, so why try?
Offering shipping that can take as little as 1-day is a massive point of value this time of year for a different market than the one you normally serve. If this was August, I wouldn't suggest doing the same thing. Some of the autographed pictures and stuff like that you sell, there aren't many places other than eBay to get them at low prices.
This is based on what I have noticed with items I have sold that otherwise would have gone Lettermail. Looking at the kind of stuff you sell, I think this is the time of year where you might have people who aren't regulars and who value fast shipping. I also think that you may not have a lot of competition for that market, because a lot of autograph sellers in Canada likely aren't switching to UPS rates.
I totally understand where you're coming from, because I wouldn't have agreed with this standpoint two or three weeks ago either. But I think specifically with the time of year we are in, if you sell something that isn't easily purchased on Amazon (like you do), and you can offer exceptionally fast shipping, you're going to get more sales than if you offer cheaper (but already expensive) shipping that as of a few days from now will tell people the item may not arrive for Christmas.
The only warranty this post comes with is that if you try it for a week (same-day shipping, UPS standard) and your Canadian sales tank, you can come back here and tell me how wrong I was. I suspect it will work well for you at least until Christmas.
