No tape required!

 I have just received a parcel which only too well demonstrated how not to wrap a valuable Corgi model. I had purchased a Corporal Missile on its launching device with an original box from an Ebay seller with the tag grandadsattics83 and also paid £10 postage. That did seem quite a lot for a parcel from Essex to Northamptonshire but I assumed he was using Royal Mail's Guaranteed Next Day delivery service or something similar. For quite a valuable item such as this that seemed reasonable enough., Although, £3.39 will buy a suitably tracked and insured service online via Royal Mail's 48 service, and is what I use by default in the UK these days, I accept that not everyone buys postage online or bothers to look at different options to those a post office chap or lady will suggest.

The service was actually Evri, which was a bit disappointing as they would only have charged grandadsattics83 £3 or so, but I guess that's life and some sellers may make more money on their postage fees than they do on the products!

So £10 I could sort of swallow and the Evri girl who delivers here is friendly and hasn't yet resorted to chucking things over the garden fence. It was the packing that troubled me. First of all, the parcel rattled - there was something loose inside and you can all imagine what a missile does, especially the heavy Corporal Missile, when unrestrained. The box did have its original packing piece but clearly that wasn't sufficient to retain the contents in one place en route.

I would like to have unwrapped the parcel by not having to rotate it but that proved impossible. Good old grandadsattics83 had used best part of a roll of brown sticky tape on each of several layers of bubblewrap. You try separating brown tape, or any tape, for that matter, from bubblewrap. If you're very lucky you might locate the start of the several yards (or even more frustrating, the hundreds of individual small pieces,) of the stuff used but usually you're not and you're left to fight with a piece that goes beneath another or trying to cut your way out without damaging anything.

As I had no option but to unwind all this ridiculous tape my heart sank every time I heard the thud of something moving from one place to another inside. Eventually I got down to the last layer.  More yards of tape on bubblewrap.

Why do people feel they have to add tape to bubblewrap in the first place? All you need to do is wrap the model in some soft paper, fold some card around a box, if there is one, to prevent it getting squashed or pierced. Indeed, there is a lot to be said for flattening the box - where it's a thin card type that you can - and packing that separately anyway. Then wrap some bubblewrap or similar protective stuff around the contents and pop it in a sturdy box. Add more protection around this as needed so that it doesn't move. And, of course, if something is in a box, add some protection inside the box as, even if the original packing pieces are present and correct, it is highly unlikely that 60 year old carboard will be enough.

Sure enough, on finally getting to the lovely old box, there was the missile lying next to the launch device and not in its proper place. However, apart from what might be an extra chip on the shaft, I can't see any obvious damage to the missile. There are a few dents in the packing piece but they may have been there before. All in all it was quite a relief that there was really not a problem and I knew that the box would need some repair anyway.

Looking at grandadsattics83 feedback he gets plenty of compliments for his wrapping. It is because people generally seem to think that bundling piles of tape tightly around bubblewrap is good practice that I decided to write about the frustrating side of things for us buyers. The matter of wrapping this stuff very tightly around a model that's not in a box is also worth mentioning while I'm at it. I have had several items arrive where the wrapping is so tight that it is straining the suspension or maybe a screen on a convertible. Even an old 50s saloon with no suspension can be at risk as you try to find a way to start cutting into that crazy wrapping without metal touching model.

As I said, all you need to do is wrap a model with plenty of the right material but no tape is required. The outer box should be enough to keep everything in place and it's hardly likely to unwrap itself en route, is it?

Of course, if all you intend to do is pop the model in some bubblewrap and then a jiffy bag then you would need some tape, I suppose. But I am really very much hoping none of my readers would consider such a package so, again, no tape required. 

And no, you don't even need that little bit to hold things in place while you search for a box. Find the ruddy box first, add some newspaper, old Christmas paper, those foam shapes, chopped up old Amazon delivery bags or containers, preferably not shredded paper which can go everywhere when you pull it out and it shatters into a million small particles but, OK, shredded paper if that's all you've got, put your model in its nice soft paper and un-taped bubblewrap in a bed of the aforementioned, check nothing moves that shouldn't move and close the box.