The scariest moment in selling a bottle is handing it to a courier. This guide takes that fear apart piece by piece, because in a well-run sale the seller never actually carries any of the risk.
You never arrange the shipping
When you sell to us, the whole apparatus arrives at your door: a shipping box, foam bottle protectors, and a prepaid return label insured from your doorstep to our intake table. You don't open a shipping account, you don't fill out forms, you don't guess at anything. Drop the box off at any UPS Store or authorized UPS drop-off location, keep the receipt, done.
Carriers move alcohol through their own programs
The major carriers each run a dedicated alcohol shipping program, and our shipments travel inside it on our account, with adult signature at delivery. That's the entire answer to the how-does-this-ship question: through the front door, on paperwork we handle, the same way bottles move for everyone in this industry. The label-it-vinegar trick you'll see suggested on forums is how packages vanish with no insurance behind them. Nothing that ships to us ever needs it.
Packing, the short version
- Start with the kit: the box it arrives in is the box your bottles go back in.
- Place each bottle securely inside the foam protectors.
- Tape the box shut and adhere the provided return label directly over the original label.
- Drop it off at any UPS Store or authorized UPS drop-off location. Everything is pre-paid, so you can skip the line.
- In warm summer months, drop off on a Monday or Tuesday so the box never sits in a non-climate-controlled facility over the weekend.
The long version, with our actual packing video, lives in the packing guide. Watch it once before you pack anything you care about.
If a bottle breaks anyway
On our label, a broken bottle still pays out at the full quoted amount, and the claim is our paperwork, never yours. That's as true for a single Weller as for a whole Antique Collection set, which is exactly the cargo people are most afraid to hand over. Fear of the courier should never cost you a fair sale.