Collecting American Sports Items Overseas
 

I recently learned that my work is relocating me to Italy for a few years. While I'm stoked for the experience and travel, I hate leaving my hobby here in the states. So in an effort to avoid that, does anyone have any advice for continuing my collecting of early American sports items?

eBay connects the world ;)

"No international shipping"

I was looking for a little more local focused advice

Italy
 

I don't know that you will have a lot of luck in Italy with American items. You will just have to get there and see. You will still be able to be on Net54baseball (obviously) so there is at least that :). I think the internet (ebay) is going to be your best bet. Even though many sellers say "no international" shipping I think if you politely email them, some of them will bend a little. You might have to plead and make their job easier but I bet many will listen. I would and I don't usually ship outside the US except Canada. We have Google Analytics installed on this board and here below is the frequency of Italian visitors in the last month....There were 113 out of over 120,000 visits, they stayed on the site for 7 minutes 33 seconds and had 14%-15% bounce rates. Those are minuscule numbers.


Italy 113 7.33 00:07:44 15.04% 14.16%

Thanks for the stats Leon. I'm sure I'll rely on the board for a connection to my hobby. I hope to increase the visitor by one but 5-10x the time on site. I guess I'll just have to get there and feel out the situation. Who knows, maybe I can bring some new and interesting stuff to the board members.

An Italian hoops collector I know, will occasionally ask me to bid on his behalf, in cases where the seller doesn't ship to Italy. I re-address the package, take it to the post office and ship. He reimburses the postage and usually adds some extra for my time. He has an amazing collection and much of it has come from the US.

Although, I've not heard good things about the Italian postal service.

Overseas Collector
 

I have spent 10 of the last 13 years overseas and I've been collecting Cincinnati Reds stuff the whole time. Other than a cheap Reds plastic bobbing head that I found in Hong Kong, everything I've bought has been through ebay, the Reds team shop or one of the auction houses. I've always been able to work out shipping. There are "re-mailers" that you can use if needed, but of course that adds to the shipping costs. Hope this helps.......

Any auction houses that I've used send items abroad although postal costs can be relatively prohibitive.

In my experience, the majority of eBay sellers will also but a substantial minority will not. Interestingly, Italy is one of those countries that seems to appear regularly as one of the destinations that some sellers will not send to - presumably due to problems with the Italian postal service.

Another aspect to bear in mind is customs. I'm not sure how it works in Italy but, here in UK, it seems very "hit and miss" as to what gets held up and charged by customs and what gets let through. This "hit and miss" reality is irrespective of whether the full value of the item is declared on the packet or it. If you are looking at purchasing an item with one eye on its investment potential, living abroad may be a prohibitor given postal charges, potential customs charges and, if you're being paid in € rather than $, currency conversion charges.


For info., there's a large calcio ("soccer") collector base in Italy. In my experience, they primarily collect shirts, pennants, tickets and stickers (esp Panini).

These are great comments, thanks. Does anyone have experience shipping to an APO?

I have a friend living in Madrid and she doesn't like me to send her anything larger than a letter because has to to pay duties on it.

Luckily, baseball cards are awfully small.

I've bought from and sold to Italy a couple of times and don't recall any shipping issues. I also have shipped cards to APO and haven't had any troubles.

To tell you the truth, I've shipped to lots of foreign countries and haven't had problems. All the Western European countries are fine in my experience. I have no problem shipping to them.

Might not hurt to get an American reference or two, to vouch that you're a reputable collector who happens to be working in Italy. May help allay any foreign shipping fears of some potential sellers.

E-Mail Me
 

Scott,

You have my e-mail address and phone number....I might be able to help.

Jeff

Italian Baseball League
 

Hey Scott...a friend of mine played for Telemarket Rimini last year...you'll be able to get your fix of "professional" baseball that way...I'm looking for a few things from the Italian League so if you're willing to help, I can share details. Shoot me a PM...and best of luck! Matt

Thanks everyone. I think most of you are right, I'll just get there and feel out the situation. Should be interesting none the less.