Packing and shipping stone
Updated
Minerals are the worst shipping proposition in the estate: heavy, hard, brittle, and often with a projecting crystal that is the whole value.
Dense, hard and brittle
A cabinet specimen is dense enough that its own weight is the hazard. It will break through packing that would protect something lighter, and it will damage whatever it lands on inside the box.
And the part that snaps is the part that matters: the terminated crystal, the delicate spray, the thin blade.
Double boxing
The standard and it is not optional for anything of value.
The specimen immobilized in an inner box, the inner box suspended in cushioning inside an outer box, with no contact between the two through a hard point.
Single-boxed stone arrives broken at a rate that will surprise a first-time seller, because the outer box takes impacts directly to the specimen.
The inner pack
Wrap the specimen so nothing moves, supporting the fragile parts specifically rather than uniformly.
Fill every void. Movement is what breaks things.
Protect projecting crystals individually, a collar of tissue around a spray before the specimen is wrapped.
And keep the label with the specimen, inside, where it cannot be discarded with the packing. A label loose in an outer box goes in the bin with the paper.
Shipping realities
Weight makes this expensive and the cost is a large fraction of a mid-price specimen.
Insure it, and photograph the specimen and the packing before it goes. A damage claim without a photograph of how it was packed is not a strong claim.
Say how you pack in the listing. Buyers of breakable things buy from people who describe their packing.
And for anything reactive, remember the parcel is an enclosed space: newspaper and foam around a sulfide for a week is fine, and leaving it there afterwards is not.