How to Properly Pack and Ship Antiques
Antiques, or family heirlooms, are typically important to the people that own them. They’re rare, valuable, usually a combination of the two, and when it comes to transporting them across the country it can be quite an undertaking, to say the least. You want to make sure that they are properly secured against anything damaging your antiques and that they are secured in such a way that they, in turn, cannot damage anything else (or themselves in the process). “Well, that’s easy,” you may say. “Just wrap it with a whole thing of bubble wrap!” Well, that may work for some things, but not for everything, and luckily, there are moving companies that know how to handle such things like that.
Shipping antiques is anything but easy, mainly because packaging antiques depends on the antique. For larger items, such as chairs or dresser drawers, your moving company will have procedures to ensure that your antiques are properly protected. They will generally wrap them, though some may actually be boxed up with padding after being wrapped, depending on the age and value of your antiques. Smaller antiques that can fit in a bag or small box (such as dolls or figurines) should be packed carefully by you, as movers are more experienced moving larger items rather than packing smaller ones.
You should plan on taking at least some of your antiques with you, and if you’re not able to do that, perhaps ship them through a third-party shipping company like FedEx or UPS. Make sure that they know how fragile your antiques are (if they are – some antiques may be sturdy, but many are hard to replace and there’s few things that are unbreakable in this world), as some shipping companies care less than others unless you pay the right amount. Of course, it’s all relative – you should of course do what your moving company suggests, as they will ultimately give you the best advice since they’re the ones that’ll actually handle your stuff. If you’re interested in free household moving quotes, visit this page; it has links to additional articles that can give you more information about household moving and you can also access our free household moving quote request form there as we..
Since 2007 Dave has written all the content and blogs for American Auto Shipping and during this time added the duties of customer support and transport logistics.
He currently resides in Washington with his three kids and their mom and cat. A fan of Marvel movies and good stories, when not shipping cars Dave can be found working on his novel, enjoying a good book or playing some tournament HALO.