Registered Mail Question

It is signed for and accounted for every time it changes hands but this accounting is INTERNAL to the post office, it is a paper tracking and not always posted online. You are being paranoid, but most people are paranoid when they start shipping expensive merchandise.

As to the timetable, Registered is noticeably slower than regular mail. Taking a week is very common, two weeks is not unusual. Over a month is unusual but does sometimes happen. It used to be that the post office wouldn't even open an investigation until it has been at least 30 days. On rare occasions a package will disappear for two months or more. It happened recently to a member of of one of the forums I'm on to a package going to ICG. HOWEVER, Registered mail is VERY VERY safe and it will eventually show up some 99.9999% of the time.

A quick comment. The only two items I've had go astray were registered letters from the U.S. to Canada. One was refunded by PayPal, and the seller had a third party insurer. All went amicably well with that one.

The other was a non-PayPal transaction. So, the seller made a USPS claim on my be-half. He became so frustrated with the process, that it eventually fell into my hands... and what the hay, he had his money and the coin was gone.

In this instance, the last tracking memo was "Mail piece diverted to Customs". So, of course, the USPS said your item was at Customs (Canada=CBSA), and the CBSA said your item was diverted to us but we did not receive it, and Canada Post said we sent it on to the CBSA. So, for 14 months all three entities had me in this circular pattern of phone calls, emails and letters. I sent 16 pages of identical documents to all three parties.

The USPS would not pay out unless Canada Post verified in a written document that they had indeed lost my mail piece. That was not going to happen... by this time I was dealing with the Canada Post Ombudsman.

Canada Post re-imbursed me to their maximum standard... which was 50% of the value of the contents of the mail piece (minimum standard?). I had of course previously sent a plethora of supporting documentation.

Was it worth it? I dunno. It's done, and I did it all professionally and unemotionally. It's better than nothing, which seemed to be what I was gonna get for the longest time.

Did I say quick comment... oh well. So anyway, I still prefer regular mail... fewer hands in the stew so to speak. But, try 'splainin' that to a seller... why I'm more apprehensive with registered mail than regular post.

Awright, I guess I'll try to not stress so much. Still nothing on the online tracking. Glad I asked else I'd be quite nervous at this point. Will keep everyone "posted" (haha, bad pun)

I would not worry too much. I am sure PCGS will get your coin :-)

Phew! It shows delivered today. Thank you all for the sharing of your experiences, I appreciate it. I had never sent anything registered before, and work in the transportation industry myself. In my world if something goes a day with no updates on the web tracking, something has gone wrong. Showing accepted without further updates for days and days on end..well it freaked me out.

Items going to and from anywhere via the post office is a real scarry thing sometimes. I always like those newspaper articles about a postal person that just piled up all the mail in his house. Or one that just threw it all away.
If you ever had a chance to visit one of the really large facilities and watched as virtually millions of letters, packages, boxes, etc go flying all over the place, you'ld really get worried. YET for some unknown, possibly magic or mysticala methods, the mail goes through.
Back in the days of film for your camera I sent in some film to a place that put the photos on a 3-1/2 inch floppy.
Once I forgot about sending one in and several years later that one popped up in the mail. It had my neighbors kids on it from when they were in school and now married so it was kind of funny.
Don't forget to take photos of it when you do finally get it back. HOPEFULLY, it will not take years.

When I first went to send something Registered, the Postmaster in our small town warned me that it is often the slowest way to sen d mail because it has to be personally signed for at each and every exchange point along the way.

Must be nice. I did not get even a single ASE set, and cannot afford one from the resellers. Sigh.