Quote:
...yet the USAns seem to think its okay to treat me like I am from Mars.
No, you aren't from Mars. But you are from a country where mailing coins is illegal, as far as Americans are concerned.
The root of your problem is the American postal service. On the USPS website for
things that are prohibited to be mailed to New Zealand, "Coins" are listed alongside all other monetary objects.
It does not matter that this blanket ban on shipping coins does not actually apply within New Zealand itself - in NZ, it is true that coins cannot be sent through the regular mail but they can be sent by NZPost Courier service, and of course because NZ does not own a mint, NZPost is the actual seller of foreign-made NZ commemorative coins - but as far as USPS is concerned, "NZ Post refuses to accept coins through the mail" is the message they've heard, and which they've placed in their regulations. It's not a "law", but it is a USPS regulation, against which there is no appeal. Australia, and many other countries, are in the same boat: USPS has banned Americans from shipping us any "coins".
Many US coin collectors and small-time dealers have been stung before, by trying to mail a coin overseas and being honest on the customs form by putting "Coins" on the form. That website I linked to earlier is what pops up on the postal worker's screen when someone comes in trying to ship something to New Zealand, so the USPS person behind the counter tells them that "Coins" are prohibited to be shipped to that destination country, and the parcel therefore cannot be accepted. So, rather than spend hours studying the USPS regulations for every single country in the world and print a long list of accepted and/or prohibited countries that they can or cannot ship coins to, most sellers simply say hang it all, and ban international sales or shipping of coins completely.
Asking an American to mail a coin to NZ for you is asking an American to violate their postal regulations, void any guarantee or insurance on the package, and to either drive around visiting post office after post office in the hope of eventually finding a post office where the people don't know about this regulation or to lie on a customs form. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for Americans to refuse to do this for a friend, let alone a random stranger.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 12/21/2021 4:02 pm
