What this post is about is to help/make a suggestion to those who (1) are mailing chips internationally where (2) it is not an eBay transaction, and they wisely want to print their own PayPal postage International First Class PARCEL labels.

Assuming you are not bothering with insurance (and most times it is best to send uninsured), it is cheapest/best to send the chips at the “First Class Parcel” rate (allowed up to 64 ounces). (You are generally ineligible to send chips using the First Class Letter” rate and the “First Class Large Envelope” [“flat”] rate, so forget those two rates.)

There is no problem printing PayPal postage labels for DOMESTIC (within the U.S.) First Class Parcels. You can easily do it for your eBay sales, or a private non-eBay sale paid by regular PayPal, or if you are not paid at all you can create a PayPal label at this web page: https://www.paypal.com/?cmd=_ship-now .

But for INTERNATIONAL mailings you can’t create “FIRST CLASS PARCEL” postage labels by PayPal for NON-EBAY transactions. That’s right! Even if the buyer paid you via PayPal with a business PayPal payment, or if you went to that “crate your own label” page, you can only produce either INTERNATIONAL FIRST CLASS LETTER or INTERNATIONAL FIRST CLASS LARGE ENVELOPE postage labels. (You could go to Click ’N Ship [run by the post office], but you get no discounts.) … …… Here is my suggestion: You can get around this inability to print PayPal International First Class Parcel postage labels for non-eBay transactions by having your buyer bid in a Buy-it-Now $1 eBay listing created just for him. If you do what I do, make it a high buy-it-now sale with a “Best Offer” option so you can accept your buyer’s $1 offer. Then after he pays you the $1 via PayPal, you can EDIT the shipping label any way you want (type of goods, value, etc.).

The obvious advantages of a PayPal international First Class Parcel shipping label include:
¶ fast and easy.
¶ accurate (buyer’s address is automatically put there).
¶ get discounts
¶ get free tracking
¶ custom form (which you can edit of course) is incorporated into the shipping label
Here is what one such PayPal International First Class Parcel shipping label looks like:

Robert