The reason I posted the above is based on a package mailed at Christmas which contained a lighter, 2 joints, and a few grams of bud. USPS snagged it and I received a letter from Criminal Investigations Service Center about “reasonable grounds to believe its contents are nonmailable…”.
The USPS did not pursue it or investigate further as you rightly pointed out. They sure did scan it and snag it though. 
I’ve used 4mm corrugated plastic sheet cut into a 2" square. Use broken off cu-tips to seal the rib you put the seeds into. Stick it an envelope and send it.
If you’re concerned about possible gassing off, leave the square sitting in a sunny window for a couple days.
I wonder if the lighter (some how) got the package busted rather than the pot
Very likely it did. .
WTF are you people doing down there?!
i agree sign plastic, but i cut small squares of it and support the outer edges with bamboo skewers to prevent the seeds from getting crushed, and if its under 5mm thick and unger 30g you can ship at base bone letter rate.
That’s what I like about it. My main (only) cost is the prepaid envelopes at 3 dollars each for international but I don’t bother with any of that for local postage, seeds in baggies in a bubble mailer is easiest.
Anything more than a normal envelope sent to outside Aus needs a customs declaration and parcel prices etc.
And this is already the reality for some parts of the country my girlfriend is a mail lady and according to her mailman magazine she gets.
st.louis was proud to be a 100% scanned package city, she said it has more to do with preventing fraudulent claims against the post office for theft and damages.
Most packages that are intercepted are because the local mailman deems them suspicious while sorting there route or actually delivering.
Apparently any package they feel like they want to open up because of suspicion they just bring back and open it with the postmaster as a witness.
If they find nothing they tape it back up and tape a we opened your shit paper on it.
So I went to send some seeds to the USA and Australia yesterday and she asked me to fill out all these customs declaration forms. I played dumb and left haha
They’re in the smallest size bubble envelope (same size as a letter), and less than 1/2" thick. What should I put on the forms? If I move them to regular envelopes that are still thick would I still need to fill out a declaration?
Beads for making necklaces
Ahh clever. Should i put the value as $0 or ‘gift’ or something like that?
That or pictures for family and friends new grand child , graduation, etc would work IMO
A lot of distributors here use PirateShip to mail stuff out with tracking. I’m in the US and have shipped several packages now to Canada and elsewhere around the world with 100% success so far. It’s REALLY nice not to have to step foot in the post office. They make customs declaration stuff a breeze as well. I always mark it as a gift, then call it stickers, family photos, jewelry, etc.
Even mailing in the US it only costs me $3 usually, compared to the standard $4.20 or so when I would do it at the post office. I’ve been using it more just to be able to track the beans I send out.
That’s just a great tip for shipping anything small and light in no hurry super cheap… I had someone who was going to send me a component that literally was cheaper to buy from Digikey than it was to ship. I’m talking a small IC chip here, in some foam and a socket to protect it. Guess it was a thickness issue. (that’s what she said?)
That’s why I did the little matchbox style seed containers (see seed run logistics thread).
Under 5mm thick, just lookup letter mail rate to wherever tape seed container into birthday card / whatever - buy stamp - apply stamp and send.
Standard envelopes don’t generally require a customs declaration.
$3 at usps in a bubble mailer. Put the seeds in a small vial or whatever then in another sealed bag and that’s about it. Ship a lot of seeds never had an issue.
I have sent internationally a number of times using an envelope, an international stamp, and some irrigation tubing. I plug the tubes with cotton and separate into small bags. Less than $2 total.
If the seeds carry a high value (or are otherwise irreplaceable) you may want tracking.
I recently received a centrifugal tube filled with seeds that had been mailed in a padded bubble envelope, and they arrivved smashed to pieces.
I just sent off 3 cardboard coin holders (aka coin flips) with garden hose washers in place of the coins, holding 3 different strains of seeds to someone here yesterday. I took the envelope to the post office and it passed the weight and thickness test for a single first class stamp, so for 55 cents you can send off a lot of seeds that way.
This happened to me a couple times and I said fuck it and switched to the coin holder + hose washer method posted above. Sandwich in an old Christmas card or something, in a plain envelope, international stamp, no return address, dump it in a mail box.
So far so good. Even made it to someone in China (took a heck of a long time, but it made it).
