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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 2784761, member: 71234&quot;]The critical factor is the perception of risk by the seller.</p><p>My risk experience shipping thousands of packages including many coins, all over the world, is that my loss rate&nbsp; was about 1 in 500 items. All were sent by standard untracked airmail, under 100 grams fro Britain cost less than $4. I relied on the basic honesty of my customers, antique and coin buyers are usually mature and responsible buyers. It may have also helped that the customs form description was always as boring and generic as possible and the stated value was never more than $20 or so, in other words, not worth stealing.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think many sellers do not do the simple risk calculation for self insurance. They will not assume a tiny risk themselves, despite high shipping charges being the single biggest deterrent to buyers.</p><p>Germany should have some equivalent to standard small packet airmail that the seller could use, but a risk adverse seller will not be likely to consider it.</p><p>Americans are partly to blame. The US is one country in the world where postal tracking is very cheap or included in the mail price. Therefore thay expect everything to be tracked, not realising that in the rest of the world only very valuable items are sent by a tracked method because being unusual it is also much more expensive.</p><p>The only advantage of Fedex for the buyer is that the item will arrive in a couple of days, not a couple of weeks.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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