Hello,

I am at the fist stage of being sponsored to come to Canada from the UK (being sponsored by my Canadian wife), we both live in London.

My biggest fear is shipping by book collection. Its around 300 books that are very rare and in some cases irreplaceable.

Has anyone had experience of shipping rare or valuable books?.

Cheers

Richard

Shouldn't be a problem if you ship them in a sea-container. Rate is calculated by volume, not weight. Just make sure they're insured for whatever they are worth and be prepared to wait about a month for delivery.

My husband is experiencing the same problem. He too has a massive collection of rare and some irreplaceable books. We are expecting to move next spring to Canada and this has been on his mind.

It's not the act of shipping them that's the problem, it's ensuring they arrive intact right? After all, how could any insurance compensate you for the loss of an irreplaceable book. If I find a solution to this problem, I'll be sure to let you know.

Kathleen

Hi Kathleen,

I have had an email for a guy who is a small press publisher and he has given me some advice.

See below

Cheers

Richard


Firstly, I imagine that you're going to be using a shipper to move
possessions - someone like Pickfords??

If that's the case, let them move the books in the container with your
other stuff, but take some precautions. Make arrangements well in
advance, and get their permission, in writing, that they have no
objection to your packing your own books. If you don't do that, you'll
invalidate the insurance (more of which in a minute).

Take photographs of any valuable pieces and make sure you lodge a CD
copy with the insurers, so that you've established condition, etc., at
the outset.

Use the removal firm's boxes. Don't overpack the books, or pack them
too tightly: put plenty of newspaper in between stacks to prevent them
shifting. It's also a good idea to bubble wrap individually any really
valuable items.

And make sure you have a list. You're going to need a valuation to
give to Immigration in Vancouver anyway (you'll get the idea when you
get the forms to fill in which you'll have to present when going
through the Landed Immigrant process in Vancouver)

As I said in the message to abg-f, don't under any circumstances send
large quantities of stuff via a courier like Fedex: everything that
comes into the country will go via a customs broker (for which you'll
be charged a handsome fee!) and you'll also get levied 7% GST on
declared values (though that should, if the government keeps its
promises, have gone down to at least 6% by the time you arrive here).

On the subject of insurance with Pickfords: treat it warily. We had a
couple of damaged items when our shipment arrived (nothing terribly
valuable, but nonetheless inconvenient) and it proved more or less
impossible to get payment out of them. Like all insurers, they're
happy to take a premium and quick to find a way to wriggle out of
paying when the time comes.

But, above all, don't worry about it. We shipped around 5000 books and
really had no complaints about how they arrived. We DID let Pickfords
do the packing, but would advise against it: their workers know little
about, and care less about, books, which means you're having to stand
around identifying things that need special care . . .

Hi Richard

That is fantastic advice, thank you for sharing this. We really appreciate it.

Regards, Kathleen

Make sure boxes are export wrapped in those paper blanket thingy's - your major concern shold be mould, not whether they'll arrive in one piece.

We used Pickfords. They advised us that if we did our own packing then the insurance would be invalid. There was no mention of agreeing it in advance to avoid invalidating the insurance. You should check this very carefully with their head office. If you decide to pack your books yourself you should be aware that Pickfords will have no objection. What you need to get in writing is that they will still honour the insurance on these self packed items.

Pickfords insurance paid out for our small amount of damage with no problems. It came to around GBP45 so it really was insignificant.

You should consider having one person supervise each packer anyway. If that means you stand over the person packing your books and instruct him book by book just to maintain the insurance then so be it.

Good luck with it.

If the books are rare and valuable then presumably one would consider them to be cultural artifacts; isn't it wrong, and possibly illegal, to drag such things to the outposts of Empire?

I write books that have very short print runs (tens at best) and are thus rare. They are also very expensive at about US$4,400 a pop. Almost all of them are exported from the UK.

But they aint culture.

Oh, I dunno. Some of my attempts at disguising the fact that I have no idea what I'm talking about have been literary masterpieces.

A perfect characterization of the majority of dbd33's posts.

Ha. Nonethless, isn't it morally wrong to take objects of importance to a culture from that culture? How about the Elgin Marbles?

Possibly. But of what relevance is that to old books? For all I know, they are ancient Canadian literature.

Who's to say that they even "cultural"? For all we know they could be leather-bound train timetables.