Hello collectors! What do you think about the Universal Postal Union’s decision to ban goods in envelopes starting January 1, 2026? Cardmarket’s already removed those options. Now, anyone who spends more than €25 with a seller from another country’ll have to pay €25 to €40 in shipping costs, even for a few cards.
This is very bad for buyers and for sellers who’ve got competitive prices; their sales’ll likely drop significantly. Meanwhile, it’s good news for local sellers since they don’t have to fight for the best price when a seller from another country has 99 copies for cheaper.
From what I gathered Europe had 3 shipping options, both within Europe and Europe to USA:
envelope no tracking
envelope with tracking (this is the one going away)
package with tracking
So sellers will either have to choose untracked envelope or charge a hefty sum for tracking. This will not affect USA to USA stuff. It also won’t affect USA to Europe because currently there are only 2 options - untracked envelope or tracked package.
Sounds like its reopening the era of YOLO shipping. Good luck to everyone trying to get specific cards cheap. Time for an e4 import/export business to start up using its network of diehard collectors.
I imagine the cheap cards will still be cheap. A 2 euro card will still charge the 2,40 euro shipping.
I see the biggest problem on a 20-40 euro card. Too expensive to ship untracked, too cheap to charge for tracked shipping.
Now back to American dollars - Same concept as ebay standard envelope, and likely why USPS/ebay agreed to $20 as the threshold.
It’s insanely stupid, but Deutsche Post as a “pioneer” in that regard has already made me live with that since 2019 from the point of view of a private seller (with the exception that unlike it still is the possibility now internationally, they also forbid the sending of goods in untracked letters).
As someone who also regularly buys cards internationally though, the change is still annoying, but I think I’ll rather settle for untracked letters than paying insane shipping prices, as most cards I buy aren’t worth much anyway.
This is not new and will not change operations that much (in the netherlands). It is already illegal to ship goods via a non tracked method, but there was no monitoring (and it seems like cardmarker will still allow non tracked shipping for cheap cards). And on all cards above 25 euros on cardmarket needed to be shipped tracked.
The difference in price for a bubble mailer and a small package is like 1 euro in the Netherlands, they changed this pricing a year ago. I think the pricing is similar in other countries, so it will not become that much more expensive.
I am just wondering why they would make this regulation, I am just thinking that pokemon got caught in the crossfires of drug related regulation.
You’re lucky, then. From Spain, tracked letters started at 5€ (National) to 7€ (International). Now we’re going to 15€ for the cheapest tracked package option. It’s up to 250g, so I guess bulk ordersare welcome for more pricey cards, however the cost has pretty much doubled. Prices have been increasing each and every year, so I don’t think they’ll lower prices unless they take a big hit in revenue this year.
After reading this I understand better what happened with one ebay order around Christmas: seller ships out a single card, after waiting couple weeks nothing appears on my end and finally they message me postal services returned the untracked letter. They had to reship it tracking number.
Yes. The UPU is taking once again no stand against cheap mail from China. They’re making international postal mail impossible with to high prices and terrible service.
Not necessarily, in Germany a tracked letter to the US for instance would cost 4,95€ while a small parcel costs 15,99€ untracked or 26,49€ with tracking.
In the netherlands tracked letters are 9,50 to the majority of european countries (ranging from 8,50 to 12). Tracked letters were just already hugely expensive here it seems. Small tracked parcels range from 10 to 14 or so to ship to european countries. At least for the Netherlands it will not change as much, but for the rest of Europe it is a blow then unfortunately:(
I am on cardmarket mostly so I dont really do business with the US (and I dont want to keep up with the changing policy per week).
US eBay sellers tend to use eBays Global Shipping Program and that charges 14-20$ for cards to NL. It also handles import charges but not import fees. But yeah, PostNL is godawfully expensive for the quality of service they provide.
Those post NL prices are still reasonable to be fair, you should see Finland post prices. Business customers can get better deals, but the regular price for a registered/tracked letter to europe starts at 16€ with a maximum weight of 20grams which is barely enough to ship one card in a toploader, 100g already brings it up 19,20€. Cheapest tracked small package starts at 22,90€, but at least it does not have a weight limit.
Personally I have started using UPS for most of my EU shipments now, better service for a cheaper or similar prices.
Also realistically speaking, if you’re sending pokemon cards with registered letters from EU to EU you should still be able to do it with no problems at all since there is no customs declaration required at all. Sucks for shipments going outside of EU tho since it’s going to be really expensive now for small packets.
Sadly, that’s not always possible. Postal “office” personnel in Netherlands is heavily instructed to question what you’re sending. Not giving a clear answer can make them deny sending or selling you the preferred cheaper shipping. So you have to use online systems which are checked more harshly. Like in the Netherlands we have these digital codes to replace post-stamps. Every time I have used them in the past year the shipment was marked as invalid and I had to pay up.
Serpost (Peru’s Post Mail Service) has to follow what the Universal Postal Union (UPU) has established.
Before January 01st 2026 there were 3 types of services:
Economic (No Tracking)
Economic (Tracking)
Express
With January 01st 2026 statement:
Economic (No Tracking) → Available for all type of packages. As name mentions, no tracking
Economic (Tracking) → Discontinued for most types of packages. Only available for documents and also for packages that weigh at least 2kg
Express → Most Expensive type of service
This means that I’ll be unable to ship cards/products with tracking unless you pay for a private courier (DHL, FedEx, etc). Otherwise I’ll ship products untracked …
Why I mention all of this??? … Most people contact me to search for a specific card in Latin American Spanish (or a certain Sealed product). So these are Serpost’s policies regarding UPU’s statement.
What do local people think about this??? … They’re all unhappy … They don’t like this new statement (I don’t like this statement as well)
