Ship a brick "Priority" for $23.50 International ($5.20 US)

[Mike Ratledge]

TL;DR / executive summary: how to beat the USPS for deck only shipping up to a brick

The standard Small Flat Rate box can hold six decks with bubble wrap, and it's $23.50 prepaid ($24.75 at the post office if you don't have printed postage).

The trick is (and I just used it last week) - you can put two of those in a flat rate padded envelope for the exact same price. It's a tight fit, and for some reason you can't use the untearable Tyvek for Priority International for some unknown reason, so I put them (both small flat rate boxes) in one anyway, and then put that in the padded (bubble wrap) flat rate envelope and - voila - you can ship a brick, protected four ways (bubble wrap, 150# or 200# boxes, inside a tear-proof Tyvek envelope inside a bubble wrap padded envelope - for the same $23.50 to any country in the world except the four embargoed by the US Department of State and three not accepted by the postal service due to civil war.

It's possible that some countries don't allow playing cards. I don't think so, but Italy used to be that way and Greece used to have a "state monopoly" on them, but not any more.

If you get an order for Yemen or something similar, I would check. Postal regs are online and a very few countries require payment and accept packages only at the post. I ran into that shipping to the Czech Republic last week. IHNI why...

I've seen some people try to jam 8 decks in those boxes, but there is no room for bubble wrap, so I don't recommend it. Mine arrived with dings on three decks.

It works for $5.20 ($5.80 not prepaid) for domestic shipments, also. $21.50 to Canada at time of writing. Rates subject to change at any time, often on January 1st.