You can send ponies thru the mail either in a box or padded envelope. Determine which way your trade partner would prefer and send accordingly. Ponies should always be sent completely dry, so if you have cleaned up a pony for trade, wait at least two weeks before putting it up for trade or sending out. Just trust me on this one. Mold and mildew grow in an unprecidented speed in transit. Ponies should be wrapped in plain white or uncolored tissue paper and then wrapped in plastic wrap or zip loc type baggies before being put in either a box or padded envelope. Packages are subjected to all sorts of hazzards in transit and your pristine pony could end up in a mud puddle, on a porch in the rain or worse, so package it in a water proof wrap. Never use newspaper, or paper with ink of any kind to wrap a pony. Never send in colored plastic baggies or containers of any kind. I CANNOT stress this enough! That gross newspaper ink gets in everything! Stay away from it if at all possible becaus vinyl easily soaks up the lightest of inks and color residual and creates permanent marks and damage.

And one last tip for dealing with the post office: we people of the United Nations have to pay customs to our countries on pretty much everything coming over our borders. It ranges from around $7-15. You good people from the States, who don't have to pay customs, can do us a great favor by: marking down any item you send to us as a "gift" under $15.00.

Where do you write this down? The post office will give you a little green slip to fill out. There will be two boxes on it, one for merchandise, which you don't want to fill out, and one for a gift, which you do want to put a little 'X' in. It will also ask for a declared amount. Please note, if the person you're sending it to has requested insurance, you MUST put the amount you would claim it for if the package is lost. And please note that you don't have to do this if you feel it's morally objectionable. It's just a simple suggestion. :) Or think of it this way, if you were in Canada, what you want people to do?

United States Postal service offers three reg postal rates.
First Class mail, Priority, and Express, all based on weight of the package.
First Class mail is predominantly letters, and small packages.
Priority is a basic 2-3 day (so stated) service for packages.
Express mail is next day delivery, guaranteed, letter or package.
The most cost effective is Priority. Insurance is as follows:
0-50.00=1.10/50-100=2.00/100-200=3.00 and so on..basically a dollor for every hundred after that. Rates subject to change July 1.01.
Please access http://www.usps.com/ for current rates and services available.

Submitted by Taffeta from Taffeta's Identification Pages Thanks a ton!!

This is one of the most confusing matters of all, in my opinion. A lot of people on the internet are strong believers that to ship from the UK to the US or Canada is fiendishly expensive. It is NOT.

In the UK we have three postal 'zones' which determine shipping to the countries outside our borders. Zone One is Europe, predominately the EU countries to which we have a fairly economical rate (36p for a letter, compared with 27p first class within the UK - that is about 50cents US and 35cents US) The United States and Canada are in Zone Two (outside Europe) and therefore shipping to North America cost the same regardless of where abouts on the continent you live. There is no fluctuation for Eastern or Western states - it is a flat rate.

Shipping therefore on a single pony airmail from the UK to North America costs about $2 US ($3 US if it is a larger or more weighted pony such as a sea pony or a secret surprise pony). However, the larger the item the higher the shipping cost goes and playsets and the like can cost £10+ ($15 or more) to ship even via Surface Mail. (I have once spent £22 ($30) on shipping a box containing a playset airmail to the US). Surface Mail is a pain and a half, because it takes between 4 and 6 weeks to arrive in North America (two weeks max to Europe, eight weeks plus to Zone Three ) So only use Surface if you really can't afford air. Zone Three is the most expensive shipping zone and includes countries like Australia, Singapore and New Zealand. To here ponies can cost $3-4 US apiece to ship. An important thing to take into consideration is registration of payment or items. It is perfectly possible to send an item internationally recorded from a UK post office - HOWEVER the USPS do NOT recognise mail registration from outside the USA. This means that there is no guarantee on your item past the UK borders, so it is often an unnecessary expense. However, it is often wise if sending $US cash to the UK to register your envelope - then it has to be signed for.

Please bear in mind that in order to mail an item in the UK which is not a first or second class internal letter the sender MUST go to the Post Office. This makes it very difficult to estimate exactly a shipping cost before posting because inevitably even weighing at the post office throws up several different possible totals. There are several forms of shipping abroad - Small Packet (by far the cheapest but only available on items up to a certain size and weight - no Lullabye Nurseries!), Letter Post (for the lightest items/letters but this is more expensive than Small Packet rate at the same weight. However Letter Post does not usually require a customs form - this often leads to items being delayed at international customs offices. There is also a parcel rate which is fiendishly expensive and requires a lot of customs paperwork. On the importing of items into the UK, it is very rare to get a customs charge on any item - however it can happen. I am always careful to send things marked as a gift when shipping abroad, NEVER as merchandise, and I prefer if people shipping to me do the same. After all, whatever a pony collector's price for a pony is is not going to be reflected as their value in the eyes of non-pony literate customs officials, so I do not believe it to be dishonest to do this. Like from any other country, you can package ponies any way you feel works…however I do NOT advise using padded envelopes for ponies such as ceramics, dream beauties or MOC items. This might sound like pure logic, but I have had these sent to me or have heard of cases of them being sent to others in this way. The result is generally a broken leg for the Dream Beauty, a shattered ceramic or a pony that falls straight off its card. It might cost slightly more to send or have sent by box, but on delicate items it is worth it. The UK postal service are not kind to packages.

Another important factor to remember is Sorting Office Strikes. I mention this because in recent months we have had several, which backlog our mail and cause utter chaos, not to mention huge delays. Although it should normally take about a week for a pony item to reach North America from the UK airmail (10 days max to Zone 3, 3 or 4 days to Europe), this is not a guaranteed thing and sometimes it can take a little longer. The message is be patient ;) it is worth the wait in the end.

Packaging a pony has already been covered in great detail, so I shan't say much more on this than the fact that clear food bags and bubble wrap, or carrier bags which do not have transferable patterns work extremely well. Ponies with Roller Skates or other delicate parts should be extra-carefully wrapped - I advise it with Mountain Boy or Big Brother hooves also, because these can and will split. Ponies like Sweet Kisses ponies or Magic Message ponies with delicate lips/symbols should also be packaged with great care and it is adviseable when sending to the UK that the box be well sealed with parcel tape or another form of waterproof tape. I know it's a cliché to mention British rain, but nevertheless you would not believe how many times the postman has come to call with parcels in a downpour. Should the package get wet at another point in it's journey and the pony is not properly protected inside it is possible too for the item to get damp - not healthy!

Finally, THE most important thing to mention is don't be afraid to ship abroad. The pony community spans many countries and it's a nice way of sharing between countries the different ponies we had. It isn't really that scary or difficult, and it's just as much work (if not more) for those of us internationals wanting to ship to the USA ;)

Shipping ponies can be one of the most frustrating things you have to do. All the different terminology of the post office can be very confusing but once you learn a few of the basics, it's not too bad.

For most of us, the option is available to send either surface mail or airmail. Surface mail for shipping in the US or to Canada is fairly fast seeing as there's no ocean in between us. But shipping surface to Europe or anywhere outside of our two happy countries can take up to 6 months, and packages are a lot less secure and more likely to get lost. If you're doing shipping outside of the US and Canada, make using airmail mandatory for yourself. It may cost a little more but is well worth the peace of mind.

Insurance is another option you have available to you. For people in the US, all you have to do is pay an extra $1.00 or somewhere around that amount, and I'm pretty sure you're insured up to $100.00. In Canada, the only way we can get insurance is by registering our mail. That costs us $9.00 CND (6.50 USD) plus the cost of either the surface or airmail shipping. This gets you $100.00 CND insurance ($60.00 USD) and allows you to track your item if it's shipped in Canada. If it's shipped internationally and it gets lost, then Canada Post does an investigation. Never had that happen to me but who knows... Anyway, if you didn't pay for insurance, don't expect the seller to bail you out. On the same token, if you sell something and your buyer didn't want insurance, it's not your problem.

Small Packet or Parcel? What's the difference? Small packet is cheaper to send but is only used on smaller items. Parcel is more expensive and is used for larger items. Go small packet if it's at all possible.

I'd like to thank Lieneke for the following shipping information!

You can send things as a letter or as a package. A letter may not be thicker than 3,2 cms. The prices for a letter are 0.50 Euro less than for a package. 1 Euro + 10% has the same value as 1 US dollar at the moment (but can vary from day to day)

The shipping prices for packages are in categories. For instance a packages with a weight between 100 and 250 grs. have the same shipping price. Normally airmail takes a week to arrive. Surface 4 weeks. The surface mail shipping price is about half of the airmail shipping price. Shipping to Canada and Australia is the same price as shipping to the States. To a European country it is less.

Prices for packages send by airmail to the US:
0-20 grs. 1.25 Euro
20-50 grs. 2 Euro
50-100 grs 2.75 Euro
100-250 grs 5 Euro
250-500grs 9.50 Euro
500-1kilo 17.50 Euro
1kilo -2 kilo 20.50 Euro

Sometimes this can be very awful, because when a package is only 2 grs more (502 grs for instance), you have to pay a lot more on shipping.