Poster Collecting: Shipping & Receiving

Video Transcript

"Welcome to Starting a Poster Collection. Today we're going to talk about what to do once you've received that item. Receiving an item doesn't necessarily, doesn't really deal with when you go to an auction or you go to a store and you buy an item. When you order something through the mail, one of the things you need to do first is see how they ship it. Do they ship it rolled, do they ship it flat. Some people will even ship their posters folded, which is a cardinal sin, amongst poster people. It is just flat-out wrong, but at the same time this is something which happens quite a lot in today's world, because what happens is the poster dealer then saves money. But if you're buying a collectible, you want to look at them and say, I don't care if I have to spend ten dollars for you to ship it, ship it right. You may want to contact the seller and say look, I want you to ship in a hard cardboard tube, and then I want you to take that tube, and I want you to put into another hard cardboard tube, and then I want you to ship it to me. You want to have delivery confirmation on your item; you want to make sure that it's insured; you want to be able to track your item to know where it's at, within the shipping system. And then once you receive your item, you want to open your item very, very carefully. There's a cardinal sin in, when you're receiving an item, that they'll roll it in either plastic or paper, something, which is a common theme amongst poster sellers, and then they'll tape the piece of paper which surrounds your poster, so that it's completely protected by the paper. Well when you get the poster, if you sit and flick at the tape, what happens is, is that you'll sit and put dings into your poster by flicking at the tape. So you have to be very careful when you're opening up your item. When you're opening up the tube itself, you can't take a blade cutter and shove the blade cutter into the cap, into the top of the tube because you may cut the very top of your poster. And then once you get it out of the tube, you need to take a fine look at what you bought to make sure it's exactly what you wanted. Don't take, don't buy something and then you look at it and realize, this is a cheap reproduction and I just spent all this money on it, because then it's a moot point. Then you're going back to a dealer, months or years later, complaining about something that they can barely remember you on. So you need to look at your item, and if it's not what you wanted to buy, you need to immediately contact the seller, and explain in detail why it's not what you wanted, and don't be rude to them. Just politely say look, this isn't want I wanted, these are the reasons why, will you take this item back. Ninety nine out of a hundred dealers will do so gladly, and then they'll give you a refund for your money."