FYI--shipping times in this new era.

[Charles M]

Hello all. 

Just an FYI and caveat.  Shipping times are crazy right now.  I had an auction listed here that ended in early March.  I shipped the coins via First Class Mail International to Pekka in Helsinki on about March 10th.    They just arrived today!  I had already refunded his money and given the package up for lost.  I think  I could have paddled my kayak to Finland in that length of time.   

Charles M.

[Pekka K]

Additional delay of 2 days to pay VAT was avoided, and postman delivered
the letter to my mailbox.

Pekka K

[Joe Sermarini]

Delivery times within the U.S. are sometimes much longer than usual too.

[Mat]

I've noticed. Many coins I buy from France are taking almost 2 months to arrives where it was less than 10 days. And Priority mail in the U.S. is about the same as first-class.

[Jay GT4]

Almost 2 months from the US to Canada through regular mail... FedEx 2 days for the same package from the same company.

[TenthGen]

I've had various letters and packages take strange lengths of time. I recently sent two separate letters on the same day to two different people who are roommates at the same address in my same city. One took a few days, the other two weeks. 

Then, I had a small desktop coin cabinet sent from Europe to the US. It took only a few days via Fedex. I'm thinking the government post offices must be stretched extremely thin right now.

[Bill W4]

This is interesting.  I humped the mail for USPS for 30 years and was always amazed how well it worked or that it worked at all.  That said, things seem different now.  I can go 2-3 days receiving no mail and then receive a large bundle.  No clue why.  With coins, from Canada 2 to 3 weeks; from Germany 5 to 6 days.  Today, coins from Great Britain that left ISC New york on June 23 have just appeared in Connecticut for some reason. .  Hopefully they make it to me eventually.  I don't understand any of it.  Then again; coins from Joe always arrives in 2 or 3 days.  It's all a mystery.  I always said I would write a book exposing the Post Office but I got over that.

[JamesC11]

The USPS is attempting to deliver:  1.  Large  and heavy items ordered from Amazon and brought by the letter carrier (usually without a helper and at our address usually the letter carrier is a woman).  UPS also delivers these, sometimes in partnership with the USPS.  If Fedex delivers these I haven't noticed.  In case you didn't know, Amazon, not other retailers, is now the competition for big box stores, even hardware stores.  2.  Unsolicited mail catalogs from clothing/gift/food/collectibles companies.  Most of us have received a few of these.  Multiply them by millions.  3.  Friendly requests to share your wealth from charities, politicians and political groups,  medical and health suppliers and services, and so on.  The sheer bulk of this material rivals any Everest avalanche.  Not surprising if a minute ancient coin delivery sometimes proceeds slowly; but the cost of mailing (with insurance) is small.  Throw in corona virus measures (wear a mask all day while working)--the wonder is that USPS survives at all, let alone functioning as efficiently as it generally does, and for half a buck coast to coast.  By the way, I am not a postal employee  nor do I have close ties with any.  I do listen to them, though.  Jim, Perpetual Non-Poster

[Joe Sermarini]

As a daily user of the post office, sending expensive packages, I am a huge fan. They do a great job for a much lower price than their competition.

I know a little bit about postal service. As a supply officer, I was in charge of the ship's post office for my six years of sea duty. Also, for three years, when I was stationed in Singapore, I had the collateral duty (side job on top of my regular job) as the Navy postal officer for the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean. This actually excluded Korea, Japan and Guam, so I was mostly responsible for arranging delivery to ships visiting ports. One night, my office called me in at 2 AM to respond to an emergency message from the Commanding Officer at Naval Station Diego Garcia. He had sent an urgent message demanding to know why they had not received mail for 7 days. I responded immediately with a one-line message. "You have not received mail for 7 days because no cargo planes have landed on your island for 7 days." (The scheduled cargo delivery plane had broken down and was being repaired in Japan. I had no control over flight schedules whatsoever, and he knew that.)

The best part of this side job was a one week trip to Hawaii each year for the DOD Pacific Postal Conference.