So You Want To Save On Shipping Costs - Here's How
A very good friend of mine became a financial advisor about two years ago. He was scared of social media. It was more about putting himself out there and fearing failure. He also questioned what to put out there because, "everybody already knows this stuff."
Not true! I told him to post anything. That's pretty open ended, so I added give advice about something that you think is super simple. Why? Because just because you see something as simple doesn't mean everyone that follows you, or could potentially follow you think the same. I call it my Dave Ramsey principle. Ramsey is a money saving guru...by preaching common sense...but it WORKS! The whole, "Oh yeah....I knew that...I have just never applied it."
So, you're probably wondering what this has to do with baseball cards? About a year ago I was selling cards on Sportlots and eBay, as well as trading. My eBay postage was easy - printed directly from the site. But for Sportlots and trades I had to go to the post office....or so I thought.
Paypal shipping was an option that I became aware of, and the discounts were a huge money saver. Instead of paying $3.50 for a bubble mailer at the post office, I was paying $2.66 through Paypal. Before I became aware of this, I had thought you could only use Paypal's shipping discounts on goods and services transactions through Paypal. To this day, I am still finding people on social media that think the same thing.
How do you take advantage of Paypal's shipping discounts? Say for a trade (like you want to send me Cubs cards), you simply go to www.paypal.com/shipnow. Log in to your account, and then a "Ship To Address" window pops up. Fill out the information, and you can even add an email. If you enter your trading partner's email address it will automatically send them the tracking info. Once the information is entered it takes you to the screen where you enter the package size. If it's a first class package, you'll have to know the weight. It's really easy to use for small bubble mailers (a few cards), or flat rate envelopes and boxes. Print the label, slap it on your package, and drop it off at the post office. And you just saved some money.
FLAT RATE
Recently I received a box of 600 Cubs cards inside a standard priority mail envelope. My trading partner paid nearly $14.00 in postage. He could have sent the same amount of cards for $7.55 by utilizing priority flat rate envelopes.
My post office doesn't have these flat rate envelopes in stock, so I order them on the USPS website (they are free). It does take up to two weeks for them to deliver, so I order about 50 at a time. These are called flat rate padded mailers. You can fit two 330-count BCW boxes in these envelopes, and by using Paypal Shipping it's only $7.55. Again, if you shipped a 600-count box full of cards first class (priority due to weight) by going to your post office window it'll run in upwards of $14.00.
Medium and large flat rate boxes are another huge cost saver when moving bulk trading cards. You can typically fit around 2,000 cards inside a medium flat rate box, and if you use a large gaming flat rate box (pictured above), you can fit around 4,500 cards inside. With the gaming boxes, you'll likely have to order off the USPS website as your post office typically only has the standard large boxes in stock and those fit less than a gaming box.