How to Properly Pack Vintage Equipment for Shipping

BG197 - How to properly pack vintage electronics or any equipment for shipping. This applies to ham radio gear, vintage stereo equipment, amplifiers, guitar amplifiers, reel to reel units, you name it... Do it right and avoid busting up a piece of vintage gear!

[@mikesradiorepair]

Ahhhhh, what a relief. Someone that actually knows how to package correctly. I get so many radios sent in for restoration that either get damaged or completely destroyed in transit. I HATE packing peanuts. I tell all my customers, never ever use packing peanuts. The first time a box gets dropped the packing peanuts turn into packing peanut dust. Proper packing material is so much cheaper than replacing a radio or amplifier. I'm lucky. My brother works at a bearing manufacturing plant that throws away white extruded poly???? sheets by the dumpster full daily. He brings it to me by the truck load. I probably have over 2,000 square feet of the stuff out in the warehouse. Not to hard, not to soft, just right. It comes in 1/4", 1/2", 1" and 2" thickness. I also see I'm not the only one that uses a tape machine. I have a motorized Marsh 4-BT Touch-Taper.

[@JohnJano]

I used to do a lot of vintage stereo selling on Ebay, back when people thought they were paperweights! You could only imagine the piles and piles that I acquired. The only means I ever used was newspaper and double boxing. Although it made the box heavier. They ALWAYS arrived safe, I kid you not. I packed many a Pioneer SX-1250, 1250, 1280, etc. Also, turntables, which of course are very fragile. ALWAYS arrived safely to their door. Keep in mind, this is 100's of stereos we are talking about. I will admit, I used a ton of newspaper to really keep them safe. I had comments like, this box could be dropped out of an airplane and not get damaged! I have over 1000 positive marks on ebay. I sure miss going to rummage sales and picking up some great Pioneer, Marantz, McIntosh, Sansui amplifiers speakers, receivers, reel-to-reels, turntables. Sometimes I would pick up a whole system piled up the to the ceiling!

[@jamesnitzberg8405]

Fantastic video. First one I’ve seen like it. Now I know how to pack my electronics a lot more safely when I am missing the OEM boxes. Thank you!!

[@sarahkumkumapoovu]

Wow! This is the best packing video for hi-fi gear!

[@jjudijo]

My dad died recently and I want to sell his decent stereo components. This video is a life-saver. Thanks for it.

[@God-CDXX]

all eBay electronics sellers should watch this !!

[@jeremytravis360]

I spent most of my life in the Hi Fi trade. One great experience was when I was sent down to the packing department of a famous London Department store where we were taught how to pack thing properly. I got even more experience when I saw how manufacturers produced boxes for shipping Hi i equipment. My worst experience on bay was someone who sent me a Technics SL7 packed in a large Jiffy Bag and seemed astonished when I told him he had not packed it properly. I feel reluctant to give sellers a science lesson about mass inertia and weight in an effort to get them to pack things properly.

[@boonedockjourneyman7979]

One of your most important videos. Please do more plain, bone marrow simple videos. You bring experience where it’s needed.

[@Technical_Audio]

Good video. I agree with everything you did. I would add that it’s a good idea to wrap the chassis in a stout plastic bag and seal it as well as possible against water damage. The smooth plastic will also protect the chassis from scuffing which can occur when the stiffer foam boards move against the chassis during shipping. Sometimes I will tightly wrap the chassis with thin flexible foam sheet material (1/8” or 3/16” thick), to protect it from scuffing. I also will scrape out holes in the thick foam for the feet to lock the chassis to the foam and not allow it to slip. With turntables, remove the platters and separately wrap them, and lock the suspensions. Generally, try to imagine what could happen during shipping and visualize shock forces going in all six directions. That will help you visualize what might need extra attention.

[@swinde]

Excellent. I would have also put the amplifier in a plastic "bag" as well.

[@ThePhonographCompany]

Great video. Good packing takes a lot of time and effort plus good packing materials. The postal and delivery services take a lot of blame for things that are damaged due to amature packing.

[@thulinp]

Very useful video for many people. If there's a "space to fill" like with this amp, I feel the tubes should be safe to go in there, packed properly in bubble wrap. They can't really get crushed there. Possibly inside the cover of a covered device, again in bubble wrap.

[@kenthereseller1511]

Prepping to ship a Teac X-1000r and found your excellent video. Packaging and shipping are part of the buyer's experience. Receiving their item professionally packaged and intact is the expectation. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@curtislucka9954]

Very practical - I appreciated this session and hope many eBay sellers are watching. I throw-up when I open a box of peanuts. Professional sellers please watch!

[@winghong631]

Hi, good packing skills. I am a shipper for a UPS Store and ship a lot of antiques as well as items like this at my store and I can attest to most of everything on this video. Double boxing with foam board is excellent for packing vintage or delicate heavy items. I will state that I felt the box could have been cut down a little but I may not have paid attention to the weight so I won’t judge. It’s always better to overpack than damage an item with shipping. I will state that that “Gump Tape” (the one with the fiber strands and sticks with water) is a great tape but I do see it misused all the time. It will come undone when when the box is not plump. I see it all the time with Amazon boxes because that’s all they use and they never put enough packing pillows. This video did mention to fill in everything. I just want to offer that little bit of explanation. I would also recommend bagging items so the foam bits or water during bad weather doesn’t damage anything. Good job dude.

[@daytonvalleydeals6056]

I have two reel to reel players, and an oscilloscope listed on ebay. Thanks for the great content! I feel more confident that I can ship them safely.

[@fflynnful]

I was using beaded polystyrene and stuff like that to package electronics such as vintage tape decks and have had some failures with that. I saw your videos and began using the materials you describe here and that has greatly improved things. i now get complements rather than complaints from my buyers. Thanks!

[@billbosch9127]

I went in a back room at a UPS shop and the lady used a heat molded Styrofoam mold. I need to see about getting some of that! It fills in all the gaps to perfection !

[@sincerelyyours7538]

I often had to ship large and heavy computer parts around the world for one of my past jobs and nothing ever arrived damaged. That experience came in handy one day when I shipped my great-grandfather's 1939 Hammarlund HQ-120X shortwave receiver from my folks' house in the US to my home in Asia where I planned to restore it. A professional shipper, who clearly had never shipped a shortwave radio before, wanted $600 and I said "no way!" The thing weighed 55 lbs but its almost square shape made building a set of nested boxes fairly straight forward. Home Depot supplied the double-layer heavy-duty boxes, 3/4" thick white styrofoam sheets, bubblewrap and tape. The boxes weren't near the right size (they never are) so they had to be cut down from bigger ones. Lots of time was spent cutting the boxes and gluing them back together with contact cement, then cutting carefully measured sheets of foam to fit all six inner sides of the boxes, including two for the front face of the radio so one could get holes cut into it to fit the shafts for all switches and knobs which I made sure to remove and bag separately. I then removed the vacuum tubes and carrying handles and wrapped them each in bubble wrap, then made a cardboard baffle to protect the large VFO and Bandspread dials from anything that might strike them and break the brittle plastic. I then stuffed the tubes, handles and bag of knobs back into the cavity but left the tubes out of their sockets so they wouldn't break from any shock impacts. I then wrapped the whole device on all sides, including the one foam sheet with the holes cut into it taped to the face-plate, in six turns of the same thin bubble wrap I used to wrap the tubes in and taped it all up nice and tight, then slipped the whole business into the smaller of the two boxes and taped it shut. That box then slid perfectly into the larger box which had its own walls lined with foam. The big box was then taped shut and completely wrapped like a holiday gift in heavy brown shipping paper. It took several days out of my vacation time to do this work but the postage and packaging costs were 1/3 what the shipper wanted and the box arrived 10,000 miles away at its destination safe and sound and in perfect condition.

[@michaeldamico5152]

I have an old 1975 Magnavox 8-Track Receiver that I just put in an inner box (before I saw your video). I'm preparing it to be sold on eBay. I wrapped the receiver first with some white foam protective wrapping (it looks like a 1/8" blanket) I received with another product and then put the wrapped receiver in a plastic bag to protect the receiver from any packing foam from getting inside the cabinet. I then placed the receiver in a Picture Frame Box that was 1 inch bigger in all dimensions than the receiver. On the bottom of the Picture Frame Box I put a 1-1/2" layer of1/8" diameter bean bag foam Styrofoam beads (Amazon sells the beads as "Big John"). After I put the receiver on top of those beads I poured more beads around the perimeter of the receiver and on top of it filling the entire inner box. At that point I closed the top of the box. I plan on preparing an outer box like you did in your video. The Magnavox has no heavy transformer and it's solid state, so I figure it would survive being shipped if double-boxed. Let me know if you think this method of packaging would be OK for a 15 pound receiver. Thanks!

[@RegiPavan]

That's such an awesome video for those who never done a stereo shipment... Another item that needs lots of care are record players, aka pickups....

[@allhartfidelity]

I like it. Very similar to the way i do it. Only thing i do differently is lay a sheet of something under the ampand fold it up and over the top to protect from chafing . For receivers like pioneer and marantz packing is a little different as you may know. Cant have weight on the knobs. For these i poke holes for the feet to set down into which stops the receiver from shifting forward into the face. (Simplified explanation). Learned that trick from Mcintosh. Got a pioneer sa9800 jist yesterday with solid core like this, and it was resting on the knobs. 3 bent knobs, 2 broken shafts. Your video is refreshing to see, thanks for taking the time out of your day.

[@zhou_sei]

note the tape job (@14:40)... nice flat, straight, no-kink job right there. it IS doable with clear packing tape. severe kinks can lead to loose tape, sticky side folds open to the world CAN snag on things, potentially pulling tape right off, if murphy would have his way. try to smooth out the start and finish cuts of the tape after rolling the tape gun over it FIRMLY. thanks for the great video!

[@Lee-NN7X]

Really great advice Mark..Thank You..

[@nuttyprofessor]

I'm very nervous about shipping vintage turntables out-of-state, but after watching this video, it'll immensely help me. I've taken some additional precautions such as writing or putting typed precautions on top and sides of the box "Fragile! Do not drop/crush/throw/tilt or expose package to rain/moisture!" and "top side must remain up", the boxes I use do not have these symbols

[@budandbean1]

Really nice job. I got a Honda XL350 Motorcycle Engine once and it was sent from California in a big single wall box that the fella laid the motor inside, filled it up with packing peanuts, and closed the flaps with 6” pieces of crappy duct tape. I wondered why it took a month to get to me. I guess it started falling apart immediately as it left and finally when I got it it was a mess of post office tape in a huge ball. At least it was a big hunk of metal. :-)

[@_Schmiddy_]

Very informative vid, thank you very much!

[@johnnysokko2004]

Great video and taught me a lot. I tried to find the XPS Greenguard Kingspan board but Lowe’s seems to be out (not sure if it’s temporary). Any similar insulation boards that work as good?

[@maggieknight6063]

This is a great video! I have a HALICRAFTERS SX-99 I want to list on eBay. I feel much more comfortable listed it now. Thanks!

[@Foozlebop]

Dense foam! I've had to ask around on Nextdoor to get mine, but it's worked for my Kenwood 700T I sold cross country.

[@Chuffin_ell]

I suppose this means you approved of my packing, and rec'd your gear in good shape.😀

[@madtater5948]

pretty good video I am totally against bubble wrap on a 75 lb stereo receiver the first layer of bubble wrap will allow the receiver to move around just enough to cause damage. i use 6 in of Styrofoam sheeting around all sides of the stereo.

[@sparkey1958]

all good, and thats how i send the amps i fix out [jukebox amps] except for i leave the valves in there sockets and fill the void around them with Styrofoam chips...i used to remove them and wrap them in bubblewrap, but you are relying on the customer to put them in the correct sockets, following one amp repair where the customer put the output valves and rectifier in the wrong sockets...i now no longer do this! i have shipped probably 20 amps with valves inplace with no problems...yet!

[@bobbylevy8703]

Super video

[@johnsweda2999]

And it always helps to use tape that has fragile written on it or breakable, and write on the box this way up only. Always good to let the delivery people know that it is fragile hopefully they take a bit more care of it and recorded delivery if you have it over there. Tell the seller you pay the recorded delivery usually not that expensive plus you have to sign for it

[@matthewreagin2525]

If you put fragile on your box chances are the box boy is going to throw it intentionally. You are at higher risk of intentional damage. When you tell the workers how to their job they consider it offensive. Better just making it securely pack the best you can and camouflaging it in between all the other boxes like yours.

[@benkleschinsky]

Do you like wrapping vintage electronics with loose knobs in saran wrap to keep a tight grip and to avoid scratches?

[@mrmaxgain]

Now, if we could get some of the eBay sellers to do this type of packing, I would have half of the hesitations about buying electronics thru eBAY.

[@JesusIsLordofMybeing]

Nice tutorial. That sure is a lot of effort. Do you eat the cost of all the packing materials?? Just interested how to handle this.

[@Blueglow]

If I'm selling, I pass the cost along to the buyer. If I'm buying, I offer to pay more to have this done.

[@BlankBrain]

I received an amp that had been improperly packed. The 19" front panel was bent back on each side where the ~12" chassis was attached. I got in touch with the seller, sent pictures, and negotiated a 30% refund. It took me about an 1½ hour to remove the front panel and straighten it. Fortunately, I have a good workshop available.

[@davetepl]

Where does the large bubble wrap come in? I always cover the item with bubble wrap first.

[@gizmothewytchdoktor1049]

lloyds of london approved :-)

[@svogel54]

I bought a pair or 40 year old JBL Century 100 speakers that were shipped with peanuts and moving blankets. Both speakers were in the same box, yeah they were damaged.

[@robertsweeten8840]

I have a MCINTOSH MC2105 Amplifier and am worried about shipping it if I list it on ebay or reverb any suggestions. Worried about glass on front

[@matthewhall6288]

LOL "Goin' Postal".

[@johnsenchakinternetsecurit8935]

I would include reinforced tape to go around the top and bottom of the box

[@Blueglow]

I did,.

[@ksztyrix]

I brought very nice power amp. Idiot put in big box filled with wrinkled bubble wrap... Of course it was damaged. He was suprised about it :/