Selling Coins to Other Countries

[TiasTreasures]

Wow, I just found this out! :eek: I suspect most of you, like me, are offering to sell coins to people in other countries than the U.S. I just read something that got me to check this out, and ended up going through all the countries in eBid's network. I found out that coins are prohibited in several of them. There is no mention of collectible coins as opposed to ordinary pocket change, so I am assuming the worst case scenerio, if we ship to those countries the merchandise will be confiscated by Customs.

Here's my list of countries we can legally ship coins to:

Denmark
Finland
France (gold coins are prohibited)
Germany
Ireland (gold and silver coins only)
Italy (must be insured Priority Mail regardless of value)
Netherlands
Norway
South Africa
United Kingdom (must be insured Priority Mail regardless of value)

I don't have many in my store yet, but I'm going to go through them all and change the countries. I also have to figure out if I can have different options to cover the exceptions noted above.

If any of you know more about this, and I'm mistaken, please let me know. I got this information from the US Postal Service website.

[TiasTreasures]

One addition to the list above. We can also ship collector coins to Canada . . . if they are not insured. :confused:

[poppa501]

One addition to the list above. We can also ship collector coins to Canada . . . if they are not insured. :confused:


Tia--NOT insured:confused: Dang, now I've gotta change a bunch of stuff:(

[TiasTreasures]

Ho Boy. Went back to the USPS site, took a slower look. This time I read the restrictions. Here's my final (I hope) personal list:

CAN SHIP COINS TO THESE COUNTRIES FROM THE U.S.:

Canada (cannot be insured)
Denmark
France (except no gold coins)
Germany
Ireland (only gold and silver coins)
Italy (must be insured Priority Mail regardless of value)
Netherlands
Norway (no Norwegian coins)
South Africa (only first-class registered)
Spain (must be insured Priority Mail regardless of value)
Sweden (value must be less than 100 Swedish crowns)
United Kingdom (must be Registered First Class or insured Priority Mail regardless of value)


I'm sure glad I found out about this before I listed any more coins! Now I have to go back and change them. Again. :(

What's weird is that I'll be able to list the higher-value coins in some countries, because I'll require insurance for them, but I won't try to sell the lower-value ones. I can get around the no-insurance rule for Canada by shipping high-value coins by Registered First Class (technically not insured), provided the buyer is willing to pay that much. This gets very complicated. I can sell silver and gold coins in Ireland, but not any other ones. I can sell any coin in France except gold ones.

We can legally ship to some other countries, but there are so many requirements and restrictions that I decided it wasn't worth the work and dropped them from my list. I'm not going to list in Sweden because the exchange rate can change and a legal coin may become illegal. It sounds as though buyers in India would have to pay duty on almost any coin we sold, no matter how low-priced, so I'm not going to list there either.

Some of you may be more ambitious, if so check them out on the USPS website.

[waterlily]

Cash cannot be posted in Australia (but you can get around this by covering the coins in thick cardboard).

Collectables can be posted here, but there are restrictions, as with all goods.

[lm5403]

Always check before shipping *anything* overseas. Although it *is* sometimes true that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, it is much better to not be in prison when asking. I quit shipping overseas a long time ago -- it seemed every time I had an idiot on the receiving end.