I know your pain. I took me years of searching to find a nice circa 1909 Brunswick Balke Collender billiard experts of the world poster at a reasonable price. I finally found a beautiful one which sold in a 3 piece lot in a rare books auction. I was able to get the lot for next to nothing since the items were poorly advertised and in the wrong type of auction. Since the auction was far from home, I had to jump through many hoops to get approved to bid and secure a phone line. I talked to their local UPS store(an auction house recommended shipper) many times both prior to and after the auction closed in an attempt to get a shipping quote. Since I received nothing but a "we will get back with you" for 2 weeks I ended up hiring an art services company for way too much money to handle the shipping. They were located several blocks from the auction house so I figured that it would take a day or two at most to pick up my items. It took them about 3 weeks to finally collect the items and crate them up for shipping. Well, I was so concerned that they completed their mission that I somehow failed to check with them that the items were insured for real value. Honestly, since I have never had a shipping problem and since they were professional art shippers I didn't think it was a big deal. The crate finally arrived and sure enough the first thing that I saw as I began to disassemble the crate was glass. To shorten the story: jumped through many hoops with Fedex who was the carrier and received $625 for damages. The picture was devalued in my opinion about $2500.
Before and after pictures
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