I once bought a very limited edition lithograph by Glenn Ligon (American, 1960-), a contemporary artist best known for his commentary on language and history via words, letters and textures. I paid about $1,200 and sold it soon after to a gallery in Seattle for roughly $2,700. Then I made a crucial mistake – I gave it to FedEx to pack and ship. It was still in the frame with a glass glazing, and when it arrived in Seattle both the glass and the print were completely shattered. This was somewhat devastating except that I had fully insured it and eventually I was reimbursed for the loss (as was the buyer).
Draft, Glenn Ligon, 2010, Edition of 55
I learned a valuable lesson about removing glass from large pieces of art before shipping them, and over the years I’ve come up with a laundry list of shipping tips. If you’re a buyer, you might want to insist on a seller following these general rules:
1. Don’t skimp
If it seems like the item will barely fit in the box, get a bigger box. If you run out of packing peanuts, get some more packing peanuts (I get the bulk Eco-Pellets made of biodegradable starch at the Container Store). I mean, can you ever have too much ice cream? Too much cake? Perhaps, but you can’t have too many packing peanuts.
Even big auction houses will sometimes ship you an item that’s literally bouncing around inside a box. I belatedly opened a valuable glass sculpture recently — and found that the head was no longer attached to the body. Insist on careful shipping!
2. Buy in bulk
Packing materials can be painfully expensive if you buy them a la carte. You are almost always better off getting the bulk deal. Sometimes it costs less to buy five cardboard boxes than it costs for two. You can order sets of 25 boxes at Staples or Home Depot online for even less – just bite the bullet and do it, you’ll use them eventually. I go to a warehouse store to buy heavy duty Scotch packing tape in bulk and those savings alone probably cover my membership fees.
3. Insure everything
Even the best packed items may not survive when a rogue postal carrier decides it won’t hurt to toss your item a few feet or ten. And people who carry large bulky items sometimes drop them by accident.
FedEx no longer offers more than $1,500 insurance for art, so for those expensive items, ship with UPS or a specialty carrier.
4. Double-box it
For a fragile item, you need wrap it in bubble-wrap, surround it with packing peanuts, put it in a box, and then put that in a larger box with two inches of room on all sides for more peanuts. Even if the item isn’t super valuable, why ship it if it will arrive broken?
5. Don’t do drugs
Drugs are mostly bad for you but use them in moderation if you must. And use protection.
See, the title was legit!
6. Cryptocurrencies are a chip off the old blockchain
And I know absolutely nothing about cryptocurrencies except that I should have bought Bitcoin at $100.
7. Art shipping
For large pieces, as mentioned above, remove the glass before shipping. The exception is when the glaze is acrylic – if you tap the glaze with a coin and it makes a low pitched sound, it’s acrylic, so you can ship it with confidence it won’t shatter. High pitched means glass.
For smaller pieces (about 28” or less) with a glass glazing I’ve had good results using FedEx’s medium art box (which suspends the art inside of a very heavy duty box).
If you can safely remove a print from the frame, the cheapest shipping option is to roll it loosely in a large tube (Home Depot has big cardboard tubes that are used to set cement – those are cheap and strong.)
8. Signature required
I tend to require signatures on nearly all shipments these days, to avoid the possibility of theft when a package is left unattended. It also makes it more difficult for a buyer to claim an item did not show up. I once had a customer in a condo building who said that they never received a perfume. It turned out they had been on vacation for a month so they simply were never available to receive the package, and presumably it was either discarded by the building or claimed by someone else. Since my delivery confirmation showed the package had arrived, Ebay sided with me and did not require a refund. But to be on the safe side, I now require signatures on shipments to any multi-unit building.
False alarms
My other shipping disasters have typically been false alarms. A rogue buyer in China once claimed that my $600 Atmos LeCoultre clock was damaged in shipping, and coincidentally asked for a refund that equaled only his shipping cost, even though the damage would have cost more to repair than the cost of the clock. He sent me a couple of poorly doctored photos as evidence. I reported him to Ebay and that took care of that.
A buyer in France claimed that his $300 art book arrived damaged but only requested the equivalent of his custom charges in return (talk to the folks at the EEC, not me!). Somewhat unbelievably, after claiming he had returned the book, the buyer sent me back an envelope full of cardboard . I reported him to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and his refund request was refused.
I’ve found the best thing to do when a buyer tries to get a post-purchase rebate is to call their bluff – if you think they are not telling the truth, just ask for them to return the item for a full refund.