Collecting American Sports Items Overseas

[smotan_02]

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?

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by smotan_02

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

[smotan_02]

"No international shipping"

I was looking for a little more local focused advice

[Leon]

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%

[smotan_02]

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.

[otismalibu]

"No international shipping"

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.