Guidelines for Shipping Antiques: Avoiding Tragedy

One of the most heart breaking experiences in my 40+ years of buying antiques occurred 20 years ago when I purchased a rare Brown-Westhead Moore garden seat from a dealer in Great Britain. 

Brown-Westhead Moore majolica sphinx garden seat

The piece arrived in a broken box re-taped by US Customs after the bottom had broken open during shipping. 

The top of the seat was broken into pieces and the base was almost completely missing. There was so much damage that it could never be repaired without major reconstruction.

What the seller could have been thinking in shipping this heavy piece in such a flimsy box I can't imagine. Fortunately he took complete responsibility for the poor shipment and gave me a complete refund for the seat, but it still didn't compensate for the heartbreak of receiving such a wonderful thing in such a terrible state. The garden seat had survived 130 years only to be destroyed by poor packing.

The importance of packaging breakable items properly cannot be overstated. I learned the hard way how to ship things properly when I worked in a retail shop and lost some things along the way, but I've learned my lesson. Here are some suggestions from the professionals.

Shipping Guidelines for Domestic Shipping

Here are the guidelines posted by UPS on their web site. To download a PDF of this chart from UPS go here:

Further they recommend:

Use a new rigid corrugated double wall cardboard box and choose the right size for the content. A box that is just the right fit for the size of your products will be too small as you won’t be able to wrap your items properly and use cushioning material.

If you are reusing a box, you need to check that the box isn’t damaged (all flaps are intact, outer box not ripped or compressed) and you should remove any old labels to avoid errors when the barcodes are scanned automatically on sorting belts. Note that cardboard boxes with dangerous goods labels should not be reused 

International Shipping Guidelines

For international shipments you need to take addition precautions. Here is a link to guidelines posted by the USPS for international shipping which require addition precautions. Once you’ve learned the right way of doing things it will become second nature whenever you ship.

Remember, you can never adequately recover an antique that is broken. As temporary custodians of these historic objects we are responsible for ensuring their survival for future generations. Don't take that responsibility lightly.