I decided to move my extras from storage, so I can start selling/trading them. This involved flying with them. I brought quite a few and went through all sorts of shipping methods. Shipping in PSA’s cardboard boxes appeared to be the best. The suitcase is outlined with bubble wrap and the boxes are saran wrapped in groups of three in case the bags get wet.
The end result is what a appears to be a low-tech drug smuggling effort, or some sort of violent attempt (not trying to trigger any NSA stuff here). Going through security, I was randomly selected for further screening and my bag (separate people) was chosen to be further screened. This pic is my checked bag. I had two checked bags and a carry on which was selected for additional screening. Mind you, the carry on had a similar setup, however it had some of the rarer cards involving a lot more bubble wrap. The carry on also had my laptop & other chargers. So, when TSA screened my bag, all you could see on the monitor was carefully stacked groups of plastic (7 in my carry on), a computer motherboard surrounded by cords and bubble wrap.
The look was pretty rough from a few agents. I traveled in a suit so I didn’t look like a bum by any means. I had to explain to the agents this was my graded card collection, etc. There were people passing by the whole time peeking at all the bubble wrap. Ultimately, I had to open one of the groups of cards to verify contents.
I got stripped searched in amsterdam airport last Wednesday, the one guy searching me all of a sudden is joined by a guy with blue latex gloves on and I was almost crying (nothing to hide) I was relieved though because they never asked to take a peek anywhere other than my clothes and shoes, not a nice thought potentially being violated unnecessaraily on the way home from a holiday
Sorry to revive this thread but I was about to post a question, so I thought I’d search first - and yours is similar.
My question:
Has anyone traveled around/out of the USA with sealed product? My friend is bringing a sealed booster box from USA for me, and I’m worried your TSA guys will open it? I’ve heard they’re really bad with opening gifts etc. When I went to USA they broke my suitcase open, even though I attached the key to it on an elastic string
Yeah, I just had this problem not even two weeks ago. Luckily, mine were just some cheap booster packs. On their scanner, cards can look like ice packs I guess? They definitely ripped one of my packs. This was flying out of Indianapolis to DC.
Bring sealed product at your own risk. I have also brought sealed product without issue multiple times, but I’ve not had the same luck lately.
Surely with all these potential issues and disasters it’d even be wise to just mail the product to wherever you are going? Even if it’s gonna cost you 50 or 100 bucks it’s worth the assurance that no TSA mongoloid will fuck up your items.
I travel with cards fairly often. Checked bags are rarely searched unless I have electronics packed in the bag (laptop). Carry on is searched about 80% of the time. 40 PSA cards looks very odd on camera & I get weird looks most of the time.
I wouldn’t worry about booster boxes being opened. I’ve had 10+ in a checked bag & never had any issues. Same with carry on, but usually 1 or 2 at most since it’s smaller.
? lmao. Random search. I hope they didn’t use there fingers to search your insides 
