E-Bay shipping estimates BITE! (can I say that here?)

[RI AL]

To make a long story short, ( yea...this is ME, RI AL, I've NEVER made a long story short!!)...

 

Over the many MANY years of collecting, I have amassed about 2000 minor foreign coins from just about everywhere and a few nearby galaxies. I used to love this stuff as a kid...but now, it's in 6 shoe boxes in the basement, all organized by countries in zip lock bags and in flips or 2x2's (the flips...probably about 800 coins, were sold to me by a collector friend from when I was teaching school for very little $...I used a lot of them as rewards to get high school kids involved in collecting)

 

so much for the long story short part...

 

Anyway, I have decided to sell the coins off. Failed at my first few attempts on E-Bay but this time I've got a little action but I'm selling them pretty cheaply. I have 2 lots on, 65 India coins and 50 Hong Kong coins. Anyway, I weigh them up on my mail scale, add a couple of ounces for packing and use that total weight in my E-Bay description.

 

For the 65 India coins, I decided to do a little test run to see how accurate E-Bay rate estimates were. The shipping costs in my E-Bay description came up at $11 plus (I think that's more than I am asking for the coins). So, using my town of Podunk, Rhode Island, I got the zip code for our sister city, Podunk, California (I wanted it to be far away to get a worst case estimate) and plugged in the information on the U.S. postal rates site. The rate came up at around $6 for priority mail, same weight. Now I don't want to soak a buyer, probably a young collector, an extra $5 that the P.O. would get, So instead of printing out the mailing label on PayPal, I will take the coins to the P.O. and mail them myself and refund the difference to the buyer.

 

How many of you guys have found E-Bay shipping rate estimates excessive and how do you handle it?

 

Thanks!! RI AL

[Dwaine]

Use Flat rate priority box's and include this as your shipping charge.

 

Envelope are 4.80 and boxes vary from 4.80 to 9.50.

[Houston Investor]

Whats wrong with making money on shipping? The buyers bid is agreement to the payment terms. Oh I see, the buyers can neg sellers on the Bay and not vice versa. Never heard of an auction venue where the paying customers (sellers) are second class to the buyers.

[Bugmann1974]

I found your lot of Indian coins and it gave me a cheaper price for priority mail than it did for parcel post.

 

Al If you decide to put up any German or Mexican coins up for sale please let me know I would be very interested! (thumbs u

[RI AL]

Buggman1974..PM coming