How to safely ship mirrors, pictures, wall plaques and other flat, fragile items through the mail

Today I am going to show you my method of safely shipping mirrors, wall plaques, picture frames and other other flat, fragile items so the arrive safely at their destination.  

Let me tell you, I have had many things break in the mail, it happens.  Whether it was due to poor packing ( I was a shipping noob, leave me alone! ) or rough handling * cough * USPS * cough *, it doesn't really matter.

For me, shipping these kinds of items has always been a challenge, boxes were never the correct size and I would always come up short on packing peanuts. I spoke to my very wise online sales mentor, aka my mother and she recommended the method that I am about to show you.  I have been using this method for a year now and I have not had a single issue or complaint about my packages.

Things that you will need:

• Box cutter
• Sharpie
• 3/4" or 1" thick styrofoam insulation sheet, I buy mine at Home Depot.                                                                             
• Stretch Wrap
• Tape 
• 19 x 24 Poly mailer
• Fragile stickers
• Something to ship

I will be packing up this vintage mediterranean wall mirror from the 60s.

The first thing you need to do is lay out your styrofoam sheet, place your mirror on the sheet and mark around your item with a 1" buffer zone.

Cut your styrofoam piece out, trace the piece you just cut out so you have two of the same size pieces.

For added protection, I cut another piece of styrofoam to fill in the gap that will form when the mirror is sandwiched between the two pieces.  This will keep the mirror from vibrating or shifting.  I just placed a piece in the mirror as an example, I would recommend filling up the entire space.

Next, wrap the entire mirror in stretch wrap ensuring that you are maintaining the 1" buffer all the way around.   I recommend lots of shrink wrap :).

Sandwich the mirror with the other piece of styrofoam and continue shrink wrapping.  I didn't want to waste all of my shrink wrap so there isn't much on there, but you get the idea.

And last but not least, cut a 19 x 24 poly bag or wrapping paper sheet and wrap it all up, attach your fragile labels, a shipping label and you are off to the post office!

I would like to put out a disclaimer that while this method works well, there is no guarantee that it will work 100% because s#*t happens.

I hope this was an informative post, give it a shot and leave me a comment on how it works out for you.

Famous Turtle OUT!

If you are not on my blog, come see my other posts at http://famousturtletreasures.blogspot.com

How to find cheap video game on Craigslist.

Recently I have been having a lot of luck finding TONS of vintage and modern video games to fill up my Amazon store.

Here are a few tips that will help you find great deals on games and whatever else you might be looking for on Craigslist.

#1.  If you do find a killer deal, go pick it up as soon as possible.   I have had many amazing deals get snatched up by someone else because I was being lazy and didn't want to conduct the transaction the same day.

#2.  Don't be afraid to drive a distance to get a great deal, but make sure it is worth your while and ask if you can get a discount for the drive.

#3.  If you don't like driving to pick stuff up, you can always offer a better purchase price if the person comes to you.  I do with with Playstation 2s all the time.  I pay $15.00 if I have to come to them, and $25.00 if they come to me.  $25.00 is a good price for the seller and it usually draws out people that were on the fence about selling at $15.00.

#4.  Don't low ball people.  If you pay people fair prices, they are going to tell all of their gamer friends and you will end up having more games to buy.

#5.  Make sure to ask if they have any other games they are looking to sell, and if they do not, ask them to let all of their friends know that you are looking for games.

#6.  People are more likely to contact through text message so if you have unlimited texting, Have your phone number in your listing.  Don't use all numbers or bots will pick up on it and you will start getting phone calls, instead spell out the numbers like this:  Eight 4 Three 5 1 3 Six One 3 2.

#7.  If you are looking for something specific, make sure to try your luck with the most general search region in your area.  You never know when someone may have placed the thing you are looking for in a completely different category.

#8.  Search Craigslist on a daily basis and setup alerts for items you are looking for.

#9.  Like pictures instead of words?  Check out Craig's Easy, and set yourself up an easy button.  Once setup, you can go to Craigslist, hit the easy button and just view pictures.

#10.   Remember the renew your listings constantly, no one will be contacting you if your ads are expired.

Well that's all for now, I hope you found my tips helpful.   Good luck out there,  Famous Turtle OUT!


If you are not on my blog, come see my other posts at http://famousturtletreasures.blogspot.com

I recently opened up an Amazon store

Alrighty, so about 2 months ago I decided I wanted to try selling my video games on Amazon.  For those of you that don't know, I am a big gamer and love vintage / retro video games.  I decided to just go all out and pay for the pro merchant account which is $39.99 a month.

Of course the hardest part of this was trying to figure out what I was going to name my store!!!    Whenever I make a character in a video game, I always get stuck on picking names and how my character look.  ITS A BIG DEAL!   Well it didn't take me too long to figure out a name and thus,Sneaky Squirrel Games was born.

The reason I named my store Sneaky Squirrel Games is due to my special operations background in the Navy.   We have some very secretive mission in my line of work and when anyone I knew was going to go screen for DEVGRU I would always say they were going to go be Sneaky Squirrels.  I think it is a very fitting name and I hope everyone else likes it!

So within the first 3 months I have had some amazing results!  I have been averaging $3000 - $5000 a month in video game sales!  On top of that my ebay store is still going strong and I just had my highest month ever!  $6500.00 in sales!

I have a few tips for anyone that wants to sell video games online.  Picking the correct mailers for shipping is pretty important.    I have narrowed it down to 2 types of mailers.

These two types of self adhesive mailers are the ones that I use. Kraft bubble mailers are way to go, I have not had a single video game show up broken since I started using them.

The two sizes I have linked above are the 250 ct #0 Kraft Bubble Mailers 6.5" X8.5" Padded Envelopes which work great for the following types of video games:    Nintendo, Super Nintendo, N64, Sega  ( loose cartridges ) PS1, PS3, Dreamcast and any other smaller game media.

If you are looking to ship Xbox 360, PS2, Sega CD, Sega Saturn or DVDs I recommend the #0 6.5x10" KRAFT BUBBLE MAILER PADDED ENVELOPES-250 qty.

If you are looking at the $30ish dollar price tag for the envelopes I can tell you they are well worth the money and they go a lot faster than you think.  I burned through a 250 ct box of the 6.5 x 8.5 mailers within the first month and now I have the 6.5 x 10 mailers but I will be ordering another box of 6.5 x 8.5s for my smaller games.

If you have not opened up an Amazon store, I highly recommend it, you wouldn't believe how fast games sell on there.  Well thanks for reading my post, good luck with all of your finds.

Famous Turtle OUT!

Famous Turtle is back in action.

Hey everyone!  I have been extremely busy for the past year or so.  I have not had a whole lot of time to do much blogging.  I switch over to video blogging on youtube about all of my recent sales.  Come subscribe to my channel and check out my videos!   They are a little dated now but there is still some great information on things to keep your eyes out for.  

I am currently transitioning out of the military.  I have 4 very LONG months left in the military.

For those of you who do not know, I am an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician on the special operations side US Navy, I have deployed 5 times in my career, once to Iraq where I was lightly wounded by sniper fire while responding to a ordnance cache.   I have had too many close calls in my military career and I am lucky to be able to get out of the military with my life and all of my fingers and toes.

That being said, I will not be leaving the military unscathed.  I have hearing loss in both ears from explosives that detonated right next to me and from the sniper round that almost hit me in back of the head, have permanent high frequency buzzing in my ears and was diagnosed with moderate PTSD.

Of course I wouldn't change any of it if I could go back in time.  I have done more than most could even dream of, and I am proud to have the opportunity clear the roads of Iraq of IEDs to keep the soldiers that I worked with safe.

Having almost died multiple times, in multiple ways has really made my decision to leave the military a very easy one, especially since I am leaving the military to do something that I love to do.   HUNT FOR STUFF TO SELL ONLINE!!    Aaaah  that just made me feel all warm and gooey in side, I'm not going to lie!

Since I am going to have quite a bit of free time on my hands when I get out ( hopefully not too much ) I figured I should breathe some life back into this blog and my youtube channel so keep checking back to find out what new stuff I have been into recently!