How to ship vinyl records
If you’re a record collector or you sell records online and you’re looking for the best way to ship vinyl records in the US or overseas, then you’re in the right place.
A box of records can be surprisingly heavy and expensive to ship, but you can find the cheapest way to ship vinyl records quickly and easily by comparing shipping prices with Parcel Monkey.
How to mail vinyl records
Before you can work out the cost of shipping a record or a whole record collection, you’ll need to think about how to package vinyl records for shipping. When you send a record in the mail it can get easily damaged if not enough care has gone into the packaging, so this is really important if you want your LPs to arrive in the condition you sent them.
How to pack vinyl records for shipping
Here is a quick five-step guide on how to pack a vinyl record for shipping. If you have more than one record, keep reading to find out how to ship vinyl records in bulk.
Step 1: If the record has a printed inner sleeve, place the record in a clean inner and put the empty original inner inside the outer sleeve.
Step 2: Keep the record outside of the outer sleeve. This prevents the record from moving around inside the sleeve during transit, which can scratch the record and damage the outer sleeve.
Step 3: Put the record on top of the outer sleeve and place both inside a plastic/PVC cover. If you don’t have something suitable, bubble wrap is a good alternative. If you’re using bubble wrap, be sure to secure it with tape.
Step 4: Sandwich the package between two pieces of heavy-duty cardboard. You can buy special record strengthening stiffeners online, so if you’re sending more than one record it might be worth investing in a pack.
Step 5: Put the sandwiched record inside an LP Mailer. You can buy a variety of styles and sizes of vinyl record mailers online for sending single and multiple records. Seal with heavy-duty packing tape.
How to ship multiple vinyl records
As mentioned above, a quick Google search will help you purchase a variety of LP Mailers, with the capacity to hold anything from 1 to 100 records. Some have built-in stiffeners, so you don’t need to purchase these separately. We would always recommend that when shipping vinyl records you use the specialist packaging available, especially if you’re sending more than one.
Our most popular courier services for shipping boxes of records include Ground Drop Off for cheap domestic deliveries and International Drop Off for reducing the cost of shipping vinyl records internationally. Both services are fully tracked and can also be booked as a package collection service if your box is too heavy to carry to a drop-off point.
TIP: If you have multiple LPs to ship to a number of addresses, then our bulk shipping tools can help you save both time and money.
