Transcontinental Coin Shipments During The Pandemic

I was thinking more along the lines of the watched pot never boiling, but

Mine arrived yesterday (27 d in transit).

I'm curious what you won at that auction. I got a 1478 Flanders groot for my early dated Low Countries series, a scarce Lorraine minor coin from the regency of CHarles III (not too great to look at, but one of only two issues from that period), and a medieval Liege florin with St. Lambert that I posted on the saints thread.

Sounds like the race was a photo finish.

Maybe you got some more German medieval gold that hammered at a pretty reasonable price?

And maybe if the current How Far Back thread fizzles again at 1460, we start another thread to showcase coins that keep moving backward, even if there are gaps

We could do single years, rather than decades (or in the case of AH dates, 12 lunar months) ... If you got both 1439 and 1426 recently, I say Bravo! I nabbed a 1407 recently, and have a handful of dates in 14th c. so I would be keen for a thread like that, and glad to start it sometime August 2021 when the current How Far Back reaches 1460.
(to be continued ...)

I had thought things were getting better...

But today there was this from an MA-shops vendor in Germany:

Dear XXXXX,
Information from Deutsche Post AG. As of: 13.07.2020:
"The dispatch of goods and parcel shipments to the United States will no longer be offered until further notice."

Here we go again.

@jbuck, indeed, the hangups can be worse once the item has landed in the U.S.

My two longest shipment times for registered packages:
1. France to New York 16 days. New York to Ohio 27 days
2. Lithuania to Chicago 20 days. Chicago to Ohio is at 27 days and counting

And yet, registered shipments from Poland (which for some reason cannot be tracked by USPS) have been arriving under 20 days door-to-door Totally crazy and unpredictable.

Still, nothing has been lost ... yet (fingers crossed).

I had thought/hoped this thread would have wrapped up by now

I mentioned this last remaining shipment in a previous post:




Last week I filed a missing package report with USPS. For anyone who has done this, it's an exercise in futility. You are contacted by your local post office, who just tells you exactly what you can read if you do the tracking yourself.
But yesterday something bizarre happened. I went to track the item again and see if it had moved, and all the previous tracking information had been removed from the USPS system. It now just says "Label Created, Not Yet in System" which is the status you get when the item has not yet been posted at its origin.

I have a sinking feeling about this ...

Thought I would bump this thread to share some things I am seeing ... curious about others' experiences.

A couple of auction houses I buy from in Europe have moved to courier only service to the U.S. (DHL seems to be the preferred carrier). One increased their shipping charge to about $40, and another even more (I just found out and am a bit irked). Fortunately, the one I buy from most often continues to just ship by registered mail, charging the same $7 they always have (fingers crossed this continues).

I had also noticed that some vendors on MA-shops increased their shipping fees quite a bit last fall. Though again, some did not change.

I am assuming this means they actually had shipments to the U.S. that were lost last year? Though many of mine were delayed, I always received them eventually.