Should I be concerned about buying coins from Continental Europe?

I understand that according to the post-speech clarification issued last night, the ban on travel from Continental Europe to the USA applies "to people, not goods." Nonetheless, given the sometimes lengthy delays and/or complications involved in ordering coins from Europe even under ordinary circumstances. and given that nobody knows how things are going to develop during and after the next 30 days, is anybody else in the USA hesitant to buy coins from European sellers right now because of a concern that they might not ever arrive?

 

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I don't have any new concerns, and almost all coins I buy are sent from Europe.

 

So here's what you've got to do. When the package arrives, wear latex gloves. Then first thing after you open the coin, is rub it all over with Purell. You've got nothing to worry about!

 

Some shipments from Continental Europe might be temporarily held up for "decontamination" depending upon conditions at the source, but that does not apply to Britain at present.

 

Hmmm. I ordered a coin from a dealer in the Netherlands yesterday. I suppose there could be some delay. Have not received a ship notification yet.

 

Today Norway is going into lockdown. Schools closed, people work from home, stores are getting emptied, etc. There may be delays, as everything takes longer time, and the US customs may quarantine shipments for a week or two (I don't know about this). It's a serious situation, but I would assume that you would get your coins sooner or later.

 

That wasn't my question at all. I don't have any concern whatsoever about being infected by coins from Europe. My concern is whether they're going to arrive in the first place.

 

When I buy coins from Europe or Asia, if I care about the coins getting here, I always have the shipper send it EMS. It's more expensive, but it gets here in a few days and it's rock solid reliable. If it's a really cheap coin or something I wouldn't lose sleep over if it didn't arrive, I don't specify how they mail it. Economy mail from some of these countries takes a month+.

 

They'll almost all get here, but they will take longer maybe even a lot longer than usual for the next 30-60 days given the customs side of it and the fact that there are going to be basically no passenger flights occurring so their capacity to ship will be greatly reduced.

 

@baseball21 is correct. I believe that it would be foolish to think that any of the conveniences we take for granted won't be affected with all this craziness going on.

 

I have two shipments from India that have been held up in customs for an unusually long time (>1 week). I suspect things may be slower, but they'll get here eventually. Even in a worst case scenario, your shipment won't disappear from customs unless it's stolen or dropped in a crevice. I wouldn't worry; all things pass in time.

 

This is my feeling. Unlikely that shipments will be purposefully delayed, but a lot of business-to-consumer shipping uses the extra room in cargo hold on passenger flights. I can't imagine we won't see significant delays due to less flights. But I'll keep ordering, they'll get here one of these days.

 

I ordered a coin over the weekend from CGB in France that (according to the tracker) left France on Tuesday. So it looks like I squeaked under the wire, since the restrictions begin on Friday. But I don't think I'll be ordering any more coins from Continental Europe for the time being. They would probably get here eventually, but I dislike waiting for delivery from Europe even under ordinary circumstances, and have ordered from there in the past only because it seems that European sellers tend to have a larger number of desirable ancient coins.

 

Ditto.

 

I do imagine the coin will show up, but lack of passenger flights (upon which air mail is usually hauled) will slow down the supply chain. Probably should have asked for DHL rather than tracked, insured post.

 

DHL, Fedex, and UPS even though they run their own flights will likely start facing their own significant delays if more people start using them thinking they'll avoid the delays

 

How long does a coronavirus linger on the surface of an envelope or inside it anyway? Most of the info online emphatically states that you cannot get it by mail, letters or parcels (mostly in the context of items sent from China) but I didn't see much on the actual survivability of the virus in/on such mediums as mail, other than some generic "hours to few days." If it's more than 3 days, it's more than a parcel usually makes inside Europe and these (as usual mail between EU countries) are considered safe enough to be delivered.

 

It's like an up to 24 hour estimate on things like mail with no real evidence at this point that letters or packages are spreading it

 

Yes, this timeframe is the most optimistic apart from "a few hours" but the most we have as evidence for it (or for a similar timeframe in this ballpark) is the lack of cases of people getting sick tied to mail delivery.

 

Which is fortunate it's not happening given that one letter will come into contact with countless others during shipping which would quickly spread exponentially