The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This thread is an offshoot prompted by Micamonster's
recent tale of horrors regarding the mysterious
disappearing Graphophone.

I am wondering about known or suspected instances
where an international shipment was opened for inspection
by customs, and then resealed and delivered.

I've heard 2nd-hand stories about this, but nothing
solid.

I am very curious to know what others have experienced
with international shipments.

Thanks in advance!

Chuck

Chuck

A couple of years ago I shipped an Edison machine from Switzerland and had to pay for the box to be inspected by x-ray machine.

This was by a private company on contract for Canada Customs. I had the choice of a $ 50 fee or leaving it in the customs area and wait for the officials to open it and look themselves. There is a fee for the government inspection as well so I chose the more expensive and quicker route.

Bruce

I recently bought a 1A motor that was shipped from the UK to the USA. It was triple boxed for safe shipping. US Customs slit open the outer box along the tape lines, but then physically cut openings in the 2 inside boxes to examine the contents. Fortunately nothing was damaged in the process.

I have also received small packages from overseas that have had tape over one end indicating that they were inspected by US Customs. In one case, Customs snipped off a corner of the package, presumably so they could insert a small scope into the package and look around. Again, nothing was damaged, but the idea that Customs would actually destroy packaging while inspecting something is a bit disturbing. However, it sounds like US Customs is pretty tame compared to Customs in many other countries!

I bought an Orchestrelle in Scotland about 10 years ago and the US customs had problems with it because it didn't "match" their X-ray notions of what an organ should look like. After it was in customs for about a week the shipping company called me to find out exactly what it was I was importing because they didn't want to open up this huge crate (Orchestrelle's are wider and much taller than an upright piano). Someone in customs actually went to the trouble of searching for one on youtube and decided it was ok to let the thing in. Overall it was a good experience, but I don't know if it would be that simple now. I have heard stories of customs removing piano keyboards and tossing them out because of the Ivory on them but I think they have stopped doing that.
If you ever do import anything large or unusual, make sure you do your homework first. Mainly because the shipping companies don't always know what you are dealing with. They also don't really care if you have to pay import taxes that you don't need to pay. For instance, because that Orchestrelle is an organ, there are no duty charges on it. My shipping didn't realize that, and I had to send them copies of that part of the code. I think most things that are over 100 years old come under that rule, but some of that stuff has changed in the last 10 years.
I sent a sweater to a buddy of mine once down in Brazil and when he went up to the post office to complain about the empty package the guy that waited on him was wearing it!