Global Shipping ate my eBay purchase, again. Shown is a rather rare Apple 30th Anniversary poster that has two bent corners and repeating creases. The seller said he shipped a mint poster in a cardboard tube with two end caps. It arrived minus a cap and the open end was now covered with eBay tape. Two opposite corners were bent, that was obvious immediately, and on unrolling a dent translated into a series of repeating creases from top to bottom. Bummer. My take, based on several items arriving from Erlinger retaped with eBay tape is that the Global/Pitney Bowes employees open packages coming to Canada. I have received several ripped, cut, crushed and dirty fingerprinted items all poorly resealed with eBay tape. On this one, in order to pull the poster from the overly long tube, the inspector pounded the tube on a table until it slid enough to grab it by bending a corner and then pull it out. The cardboard tube end was crushed and folded over all around the edge. It should have been obvious it was a poster just by looking in the tube, but no - someone had to remove it and then forced it back into the tube, kinking or creasing it in the process. Somewhere along the line the end cap was lost. This is bullshit.
So, advice to senders of posters, use the proper length tube, this one was about a foot too long. Roll the poster and wrap it with a sheet of paper to allow it to be easily inserted into and removed from the tube. By wrapping the poster smaller than the diameter of the tube, if the tube gets creased (and this one was not btw) then there is a chance the poster will not be creased as it has a bit of room to deflect away from the impact. Also a bit of cushioning on each end to keep it from slamming into the end caps help keep it from being edge damaged.
