How to ship minis?

[cpagano]

I originally put the following request in a reply to another thread, but I thought I'd start another thread to give it more exposure.

I've heard of people having good success in mailing miniatures by placing them in a box and then filling the rest of the box with fine breakfast cereal such as "Rice Crispies." I have no first hand experience to confirm this. There may be better ways of shipping minis.

Perhaps someone with a good amount of experience in shipping or receiving shipped minis could write an entry on this topic for the Fanaticus "tips and guides" section.

-Chris P

[Nick Nascati]

Chris,
Breakfast cereal yes, Rice Crispies NO! You have to use PLAIN, unsweetened puffed rice. This is an inexpensive cereal usually a store brand. It makes great packing material as it "fills in" the spaces and really protects the figures. I have also started to stick the figures to the bottom of a box using double sided tape, extra protection, especially for 25mm figures.
Nick Nascati

[orca]

I have requested that the shipper wrap the minis in toilet paper (a nice fluffy brand) - then buffered by more TP or packing peanuts, puffed rice, etc... If possible, the wrapped minis should not directly touch the walls of the shipping container.

EBAY seems to attract the worst shippers, and there seems a relationship between the price changed for shipping and damage to the product when received! The more they charge, the worse the damage!

[Paul A. Hannah]

Hey, what's all this discussion about ship minis??? Shouldn't that be over on some other forum? ;)

[imported_JamesLDIII]

I recently sent some minis out to be painted. When they returned, the shipper did as follows.

Two element bases were wrapped into little bricks. The base of each element made the short ends of the brick. They elements were wrapped in bubble wrap with enough separation between the tops of the elements so spears/heads wouldn't rub each other and break off. The bubble wrap was taped so the brick didn't come apart. Then a series of bricks were layed in the box in a pattern to keep all the bricks set in one place. Anywhere there were gaps the shipper put styrofoam balls (which you could substitute for your cereal.

There was no damage to any of the items. There were over 50 elements in a 12 inch by 8 inch by 6 inch box.

[Chris Brantley]

The best shipped package of figures I ever received was from Walburgrif in Australia, who sent me a Tlaxcallan army packaged as follows. Two elements of similar size were put together, base bottom against base bottom. As I recall, he used a bit of rolled-up tape to keep the bases in contact. This was wrapped with sheet bubble-wrap around the figures like a tube, and then folded over and taped closed at the ends. The "tubes" were then laid lengthwise in the box almost like a box of cigars.

I'm sure it was very labor intensive and took a fair amount of bubble-wrap to execute, but not a single figures was damaged and the bendy parts were totally straight and unaffected despite shipping half-way around the world.

[ August 14, 2004, 15:00: Message edited by: Chris Brantley ]