Miniature Transportation Question

Foam inside a lockable toolbox? Or other suitable hard shell. I assume most of your stuff is going via road transport?

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I second that, foam in a hard container is much more secure form of transport.

 

Actually in my experience my miniatures got more damage in foam, than magnetized. Because units which got small small swords sticking out or similiar stuff, didn't really fit in the normal foam. So make sure the foam areas are the correct size

 

Yep, customisable foam trays that you can "pluck" to match all the spikes/swords/weird poses from Infinity minis. All of that in hard case with no gaps between case and foam, and you should be fine.

 

i missed which continent you travel between. but when i send stuff to my in-law family, (from Canada to Africa), i have both options for air travel and boat travel. In my case it was a single very large box. I guess shipping a lot like for a move, you'd use Surface rather than Air.

 

I would just ship your minis to your self via USPS or UPS or whatever your countries version of that is – if you're really worried you can always insure the package

 

I need to tell you about a sticker you need to put on the container with your minis in it. It's called "Aircraft On Ground" and it means that what is inside the container bearing that sticker is keeping someone's airplane from flying. Every airline has a deal that anything with that sticker flies, and has priority over other passenger's baggage if the plane is overweight. Because it's just good business to allow someone else's parts to fly if they're using your airline, next time it might be your parts on their airline.


Sticker looks like this:


(Dirty secret of aircraft mechanics, we stick those on our toolboxes to make sure they don't get left behind!)

I'd stick that on an ordinary cardboard shipping box, go ahead and put the correct value of stuff on the customs label (at $10 a mini, $1500-2000 will be about right for a cheap aircraft part)

 

Keep in mind that AOG packages are prioritized, but they might ask people around to know what it contains (and/or open it) - and fakes AOG are not appreciated, to say the least.
Now, that's the official (legal?) statement, I have no idea if it happens often or not.

 

I've been using metal lunch boxes for years and love them! No foam to rub on them and the metal lunch box keeps them from being crushed. If were traveling with them, all I would do is add some packing peanuts in case they are moved around a bit too fast. Otherwise they work fantastic.

 

The aircraft one I never knew about. Right now I have been using a tackle box with foam from the infinity boxes to use in some of the spots that I felt that needed some more padding.

 

Like I said, it's also pretty common on mechanic's toolboxes. Not technically parts, and most of the tools you need to fix a 'down' airplane are honestly really readily available. Simple screwdriver on a lot of things, 1/4" drive socket for almost everything else. Anything requiring rivets or really big bolts should be corporate-supplied tools and/or held at nearly any airport.

Though a box full of mechanic's tools is a lot more than a couple thousand dollars.

 

This is what I use as a non-carry-on option:

https://ibb.co/MhxxJCc

Metal box, magnetized bases and as much foam as possible without breaking off parts of the minis

 

"The Foam! It's coming! It's everywhere, we cannot resist!"
It does look a bit like the foam is attacking, you have to admit!

 

A bit late to the party but when I moved across the Atlantic (UK to Western Caribbean) I sent a pallet of belongings by sea.

This included an aluminium flight case from KR Multicase. It holds 6 of their standard size card cases filled with foam. Everything made it intact except an old Garuda that I hadn't put together very well in the first place. I think a Dog Warrior lost his tail too but frankly that used to happen just taking my models to the club in the bus.

Model count was over 200 including a half dozen TAGs, antipodes, many REMs, and S2 figures of all ages, nothing had been pinned.

The foam is quite soft, especially compared to Battlefoam, and none of the painted models had any appreciable damage to the paint. They had almost all been matte varnished though.