Glad to hear that you're considering funding all coins even if a rare few may go astray, for large-ish orders you could always insure them for cost price so if that happened then there would be no monetary loss, or if not then just allow for the possibility of it happening & adjust the price a little to cover it afterwards if it ever happened.
Received my shipping notification
maybe include also the USPS tracking URL with these:
https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction!input.action
Mine, to Spain, just says:
Delivery status information is not available for your item via this web site. A return receipt after mailing may be available through your local Post Office. which is OK, maybe it's not in the system as yet, or doesn't show for international registered mail, with Casascius's shipping the tracking worked up until it got to NY or LA ports for international orders.
let uis know how much the customs cost was...
If it's minimal, I may consider buying, but i'm still not very excited because of the price...
I will, for Casascius non silver coins I received them each time with no duty to pay, even for over 100 coin lots, mostly privately mailed (as opposed to shop mailed) packages from the US to Spain don't get any problems with customs even if declared for quite high value (> $100 say) so I'm hoping that there won't be any. This year any packages I've received from Thailand though are now being charged duty but it's just a fixed amount regardless of contents or value of about €28 per package.
A fixed amount?!? How strange. What's the reasoning for that?
Yep, it's totally weird, I've had to pay it about half a dozen times so far this year when I pick up my packages at the post office, I've had stuff from all over the world (non EU) but only had to pay it for shipments from Thailand, no idea why that is, I complained & asked where I could contest this as there's no contact details on the payment demand from whoever issued it (Oficina Cambio, MADB Madrid A)??, but eventually gave up as I was getting nowhere.
Just fished out one of these pesky bills & it's itemized as the following:
IVA Importation = VAT, sales tax: €7.85
Despacho = Office = a sort of handling/processing charge I guess: €14.98
IVA Despacho = f'ing VAT on the f'ing charge for billing you: €3.15
Total: €25.98
That one was from March 2013, the amount seems sort of random & has gone up to about €28 atm so I started consolidating my shipments & as many are worth a fair bit more than amount I'm being charged VAT on I'm not too fussed, this is a new BS to appear as for over 10 years I've had nothing to pay on packages sent to Spain from anywhere.
Edit: so it's €7.85 VAT @ 21% on about €37.50 or $50 which maybe the package was declared at or they just decided to value it as, most of the charge is the processing fee.