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Some stuff I do.

Usps boxes are free. Use them to ship in or use as dividing boxes within a larger box.

Gaylords(/skids/pallets). See if a local business gets them with produce (watermelons/pumpkins/etc) or other products and they just break them down for recycle. You might get them free. Good for larger volumes or getting a bunch of different stuff all at once.

Steel banding, if you do pallets there's an 84" height limit, I stack pallets when I can but they need to be secure so I use bands to do that. I lucked into used banding equipment so I didn't have to invest much into that

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Amounts vary, I'm fortunate to have a local small scrapyard that helps me out and once I have enough material I start packing a pallet or two that they can load onto a truck to ship out.

Typically I don't fill an entire gaylord with a single material, I'll get halfway, then use the walls of the box to contain boxes or barrels of other material and then if there's height left I secure another pallet on top.

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

It’s a felony to use first use usps materials for any reason other than as marked. Just pointing that out.

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Really?

I don't ship anything in just those boxes except through usps.

_________________
Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Reusing Amazon boxes works for me.

As a mentioned on another post of yours I use a commercial book shredder to shred cardboard. I haven’t bought internal packing material in almost 20 years.

I pack small boxes by class. Band larger boards cross tie with zip ties. Place smaller boxes and tied boards in larger boxes.

My favourite choice is buying used wardrobe boxes from my local U-Haul location. They sell them new for $40 but used they’re $5.

I use the strip cut cardboard sheets to pack it all safely inside the wardrobe box.
The hen using a shipping service you can get measurement based rates for the box that are lower than the pure weight prices. USPS, DHL, FedEx and nearly all LTL companies offer discounts for particular measurements. Cubic rate, preferred dimensions, etc.

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There are multiple U.S.C. 18 codes that cover it. The box itself tells you not to misuse it..

If you get caught the best case scenario is the receiver will be charged the actual priority rate or priority express rate for the package. This has happened to me with Ebay items sent to me in a priority mailbox box wrapped in paper or plastic.

The worst case scenario for the sender is up to $250,000 fine and/or 30 to 90 days in jail. Depending on how good or bad the mood is of both the local postal inspector and the judge that hears the case.

As a large volume shipper I tend to warn people. The number of abusers that are caught is fairly small but be warned of the fines if you choose to do it.
Those materials cost money to make. The cost is included in the postage for the class. The more cost they don’t recover the higher the postage rate goes.

Nasty scary warning mode over

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That's annoying.

Well... Don't listen to me folks

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Doesn't help that a postal employee (may have been the postmaster at the time) brought hundreds of them to church for us to use for the walls of Jericho in a play...
...that's who I learned from ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

_________________
Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

I’m into collecting groups that most people here don’t know exist.
Did you know that movies are still released in VHS tapes each year? 57 so far 2025?
I deal with pennys in income per item companies regularly.

I’ve seen and know people and companies that went under for this exact issue. It’s not worth it


And I was mild.
If you get a crap PI and a crap judge and a crap prosecutor…
“This box is property of the United States postal service”

You could on worst of all thought, get hit with damage 2 misuse to federal postal property .
1702 (I think)
5-9 years in jail AND a minimum $500k fine.


That’s what took down rob black’s empire ultimately, when nothing porn wise could stick to anyone else.
It took down KOW, the largest modern VHS distributor of new films. (Who said sorry, willingly served his time, then on release said fu to the USPS and ships 100% FedEx now)
Music Land 2000, eHit, MP3Mania, ghost books.
Rocket comics? Danger Zone Publishing?


all indies sure. How about major companies. Waldon Books? Skree? (RPG content, hit for sending board pieces with books)
Phantom Media? Old comics don’t count as media? Went to the Supreme Court.
Open Media Foundation (prints and ships anything CC licensed, text film music video). Sacred Texts (the second largest pan-religious library in the world and largest inline).
Printed pages not bound are not media. Book bound makes them media, non-permanent compression or metal bound makes them bound printed matter.

Honestly… it’s just not worth it.
Reuse of sent materials is fine. But even there I caution you to make sure it’s obviously perused. Like sharpie your address label don’t remove it.


And without getting into the political debate
Every other country in the world, all 217 recognised besides us…
Has a fully state owned, or completely private, postal service.
Ours is the only hybrid, and obvious failing world wide.

Don’t mess with the cornered nearly-caged wild animal with no oversight rules

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Maybe but I was referring to actual production agreements.
Most of these are long time video companies and most are low budget. But not all.

Long time mainstays like King of the Witches (horror and dark documentaries), Coffin (giallo, softcore, scifi), Peplum (scifi, fantasy).
KotW or KoW is in New England. NJ I believe now. The other two are British companies in Denmark.

Distributor SWV occasionally releases new Indi films on VHS.

It’s still really popular in the Euro extreme music scene as well with many black, death, and gore bands releasing new concerts on VHS. Just ordered the Inferno Metal Festival 25 tape set last week.

And of course Faces of Death. Angry Films and IFC are reportedly looking to release all 6 films on new VHS if they can secure the rights and resources.

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