I learned my lessons about poor packing with the damage to several items. A top-of-the-line laserdisc player. The seller (eBay) wrapped it with a couple of sheets of newspaper. The listing photos showed it to be pristine. Not when I got it. Whole front cracked. Not working and would not even power on. Not insured. Reported it to eBay. The seller did a partial refund by convincing eBay that it could be “used for parts” so still had value.

A microscope that I’d been looking for for years. The eBay seller actually did a good job of packing but his mistake was not removing the trinocular head from the limb of the stand. A drop resulted in the top of the limb being sheared off by the momentum of that trinoc head when the box dropped. My fault for not telling him to remove the trinoc head and pack it by itself in the box so I couldn’t and didn’t ask for a refund.

I had a rare Shuttle Spacelab computer (a flight spare in the original shipping container - like a fitted one of those mil-spec Hardigg cases). I had actually seen it at my friend’s place who swapped it to me and it was in expected like new condition. Did not arrive that way. No damage or even scuffs on the shipping case, but the computer had the end with the rack handles caved in. I’ve no idea how that happened. My friend is honest - he did not drop it before packing in the shipping case. Fortunately, he had a computer that had been partially cannibalized for parts and so had a spare end panel with the handles. He shipped that to me and I repaired the computer.

I had a seller on eBay ship me two microscope parts (a microscope camera and an objective lens). Both were put in plastic bags and then both were put in the same box with styrofoam “peanuts”. The camera arrived OK, but the objective had a cracked lens. A photo of the objective on the listing showed that lens to be fine.

Think packing two or more items in styro peanuts with minimal padding around each item is OK? Try this. Take a box, fill it with stryo peanuts, put a rock on top and add some more styro fill. Tape it up and then shake it. That rock will wind up on the bottom of box (whatever side was down when you shook the box) or at least the middle. Stuff can move unless you really pack the peanuts in very tightly. So the two pieces in the box sent to me crashed into each other during transit. If I ship multiple items in a box, each goes in a smaller box by itself with padding in each of the boxes and an address label on each. I do that because a friend of mine shipped a camera in a box and the person who received it said the box was empty and there was a large tear on one side. FedEx denied the claim saying “inadequate packing”. So, I usually double-box things with a shipping address label on the inner box as well as the outer. My friend had to refund the whole sale amount.

A thing I learned from a trucker. Most people will mark a box “This side up” for something that would be better loaded on a truck with that side up. The trucker told me, “It’s better to put on the BOTTOM of the box, “This side DOWN” because if the “this side up” side winds up being on the bottom when loaded, that message won’t be seen. If the “this side down” note is “up”, then it will be seen.