For Christmas the wife had kindly ordered me a copy of Meat Loaf Hits Out of Hell and I must say I was rather looking forward to it. It arrived today and I asked her to put it away for Christmas but something just made me first check the disc and its cracked. How much bad luck does it take to receive a single sided laserdisc with a crack on the video side rather than blank side. I've tried contacting the eBay seller so will have to wait and see if I can get a refund but his listing did say he takes no responsibility for postage damage. Just wondering if any other UK members on here have had this fate and if they have had much luck making a claim to either usps or royal mail. I assume as it was sent usps I need to claim of them rather than royal mail?

I've had my fair share of cracked LDs - some worth hundreds of dollars per disc.

I'm guessing your disc came in one of those standard cardboard LP mailer type boxes or something even worse.
Those are the kiss of death for LDs. Without exception every single LD I ever received cracked arrived in one of those. It typically happens when the seller doesn't add any additional packing or padding to protect the disc against pressure. Those mailers are designed for multiple LPs and as such there is too much free space if left unpadded. So any little pressure at all on the parcel cracks the laserdisc. LPs are not remotely flexible like vinyl. I would never use those for shipping although I've received loads of them from other people.

If you paid for First Class Mail International you will have no insurance cover as it is just a basic airmail service from the USA. You therefore need to raise an Ebay dispute and say the item arrived damaged. Post pictures of the cracked LD for Ebay and the seller to see. Best case Ebay will take pity and refund you fully without the need to ship it back. Worst case you'll need to ship it back via a tracked service to get your money back. Usually the expense of shipping it back via a tracked service renders it uneconomic to return unless it was a high value title. Meat Loaf will not be high value title.

It wasn't that expensive but I do feel that as you said the packaging was the culprit . The disc was package tightly in just cardboard with no means of impact protection so considering the journey it took its not surprising that it cracked. I'll give the seller a chance to respond before opening a case with eBay.

Has really put me off buying from outside of the UK now.

Edit: got a response and long story short it read tough luck.

The good international sellers double box everything or use a pizza style box reinforced to ship LDs so there is a lot more protection. They will go into a lot of detail in their listings on how they package items because they know how important this is to collectors. No serious laserdisc collector will be happy receiving their item with a cracked disc, creased cover, spine split, water marks or any other damage. All of these can easily be avoided.

The flea bay sellers who cut corners don't usually mention anything about how they package. Most will have little to no experience of shipping laserdiscs which are very fragile and do require care. They will tend to use LP style mailers because they are commonly available in USA and inexpensive. Without the additional padding these offer very little protection for both the disc and cover.

I wouldn't be too put off buying internationally though. The lion's share of the best laserdiscs will come from either Japan or USA so if you limit yourself to the UK you're not giving the format a chance. Also UK shippers in general are some of the worst I've ever encountered and I'm from the UK! It gives me no pleasure to admit that the packaging used by the average UK seller is nothing short of terrible. Flimsy card envelopes with a few sheets of cardboard is the norm these days. That's why so many LP records arrive in a complete mess. You wont receive anything like that from me. I use the best packaging available and neither overcharge nor cut corners. There is a balance between weight and strength and it is very important to get it absolutely right for both cost saving and peace of mind.

I've been collecting since 1981 and I've had more than a few cracked discs come through the mail. I always dread a disc coming from Europe, but so far, they have all come through just fine. It's the ones that are cracked have all come from the US.

I had one sent in just bubble wrap wrapped in parcel paper. Lucky it arrived in one piece.

I've only had one cracked disc arrive. More like a chipped disc really. The damage happened obviously before shipping. The edge is chipped and has a small crack, which I only can see would happen from dropping the disc on to a hard surface. The seller would only refund if I shipped back the disc with a tracked service. I refused that, since he sent it to me untracked in the first place. Why should I offer him any better? Ended with leaving the seller negative feedback in my case.

The only problem I really have with having discs shipped is splits in the cover from the disc moving around inside. Thought it was common sense to take out the disc and have it on the outside of the cover when shipping. This also applies to vinyl records. Apparently it is not common sense, so I have to instruct sellers every time to do this. Eventhough the disc have minimal with movement inside the cover, it still can punch though and create splits. Parcels are exposed to a lot of shock during shipping, which can cause the disc to move with enough force to split the cover.

I do confirm that packaging is important when you ship both LP and LD. If you receive a cracked jewel case you can easily replace it with a new one (unless it is a digipack CD) but for a laserdisc the seller needs to know how to package the item properly.
I have been trading stuff worldwide since 2000 and I experienced many many times different kind of damages due to very bad packaging.
Pizza style hard boxex, putting the laserdisc between 2 sheets of hard cardboard (Front and back) once you have wrapped it in paddle envelope is the RULE not an option.

That is what you have to do when you ship a laserdisc in order to REDUCE the risk to receive a cracked disc or a damaged jacket.
There is NO WAY to avoid totally that risk though and I am the living proof since I received some discs from Japan properly packaged but cracked.
I remember I posted some pictures of that bad experience.
And since I have seen pictures of the items before they were shipped I am absolutely sure the damage happened during the travel from Japan to Italy.
Too many postmen involved not to mention what happens at the customs! Many years ago I bought a digital mixer with hard disc from Japan because it was much cheaper there and I was invited by customs'office to show invoice, payment (ok, that's the routine), manual translated in Italian and they wanted to open the mixer in order to investigate that the electronic components were all originals and so on because of some policies on that market. CRAZY!
At customs office there was a complete mess and it was like living in Chinatown. Heavy piles of packages everywhere, one over the other without a sense, damaging what it is below because of the weight of the stuff above, telephones ringing like the worst call center ever...a nightmare.
Once I was there I realized what happened to that damaged disc I received from Japan and I could really related to the feeling of that Japanese seller when he apolozied about the cracked discs swearing he shipped a thousand package worldwide and that bad ending was his first time ever!

Personally I consider myself lucky when I am able to receive a Disc and it arrives safe and sound because I know anything might happen as I have seen how postmen handle our precious gems

Good day: Samaron, Daro2096, Blam1, Laserdisc_Fan, Mikematijevic & Glen_M,

Thank you every participant within this thread who has posted, with reference receiving damaged Laserdisc's.

This subject is of serious importance to those of us here who are willing to purchase from sellers of other countries ''near or far''.

I myself have never received a damaged Laserdisc, although on a similar but separate subject, I received a new unopened LD DTS of ''THE EAGLES HELL FREEZES OVER'' live performance to a select audience.

This title had sound pops on side 'B' of which was really annoying to listen to, and even more so because I spent £100 on this title.
The picture was absolutely fine thou.

Now back to the subject at hand:
Any laserdisc seller that is worth their weight in gold, are those who describe to each buyer a full reassuring description, of how they package each Laserdisc in such a way that the buyer clearly knows how important this is to get it right the first time.

The seller who takes such time to let others know, is fully aware that his/or her reputation is on the line, and so takes all matters seriously when doing business with others .

One such seller who pays attention such as this is Da-Don Laserdiscs in the USA, he and his colleagues make sure that the discs have a piece of card between each disc, takes seriously the equally important need to keep the cover in great condition, of which he wraps carefully.

He then puts enough bubble wrap around the inner and then places this within a pizza style sturdy box, and then this is given more than enough sellotape to keep every thing safe and sturdy in transit.

Other sellers who take such pride in what they do are as follows;

Julien Wilk
This sites very own (I think owner administrator) Julien has earned my highest respect for the way in which he packages, looks after his customers, great correspondence who cares about what he does, and for that reason I personally have full confidence in him when doing business.

Nicolas Santini
Same as the above gentleman in the way he does business.

There are others but one is not sure if they are still doing business.

There are also the plenty if individual sellers, who wish to sell their collections, that pay the same attention to detail, with shipping each item to customers.

It can be difficult for sellers to correspond with buyers at times, due to the many circumstances that the buyers are obviously not aware of.
What I am saying here is that if the seller doesn't normally do this for a living, and is but selling his collection in his spare time, then his or her full time job and possibly personal family life will demand their time, so please carefully give consideration to these factors when carrying out
business with each individual.

Thank you everyone for these experiences shared, as they are of course important to us all here.

Take care and look after yourselves

Kindest Regards

Certainly feel your pain ...... hope you find a decent replacement sir !

No joy receiving damaged LaserDiscs. The posts herein have hit the highlights on a standard of
proper packaging. It really is common sense, however it appears that common sense is not that common.

Sadly a Halloween import arrived very recently cracked straight across one whole side and half way across the opposite side ! The precious cargo arrived in ?......... you guessed it.... a dreaded bubble wrap mailer ! ! !
With two thin flimsey cardboard inserts and WAY TOO MUCH BUBBLE WRAP. My hand went to my forehead
when i saw the parcel on my porch.... said to myself "ooh no, not again".
This was a pristine copy with obi strip and insert included.

Note to noobs : BUBBLE WRAP DOES NOT GIVE STRUCTURAL PROTECTION - USE CARDBOARD BOXES x 2 ! ! !
Bubble wrap serves to pad against jarring and dropping only !

The dealer that sold me Halloween was incredulous about how inept the postal service was and asked me to file a claim with them...... i promptly refused and demanded my entire payment refunded and since he wanted it back he
had to pay shipping. Fortunately he saw "reason" after i stated the error of his ways.
Postal service will not pay a claim in which the precious cargo was inadequately packaged. Period and end of story.

Have patience and do educate our bretherin who may be inexperienced selling those precious silver discs.
I send a friendly email after purchase outlining preferences and offering to pay "a bit extra" for the effort. .......
This request is usually well received and i am thanked for taking the time to do so.

Regrettable but pertinent thread here (again lol) ! ! !
Cheers mates

I do wish people would pack discs properly for shipping. I've had two cracked discs so far over the years. A nice Kingpin AC-3 disc was cracked so hard in shipping the disc was actually split in half the whole way through. Most recently the Disney Mousercise disc I received a week or two ago has a tiny crack on the blank side and a chip on the edge of the recorded side. It's a rare disc (afaik) and I'm gutted because I dare not risk playing it even once just to capture it to a digital file even to preserve it in my collection.

Bought once from someone on LDDB the other day and the service was first class, so I am fairly confident in making purchases here at the moment.

I just noticed a crack on the edge of a Gundam Movie I disc. Only noticed when the end of the side went all haywire during playback. Probably happened in my last move?? I hope other discs haven't been damaged?

I once cracked Terminator, The (1984) [PILF-2292] just by dropping it onto a tatami mat... LDs can be more fragile than they look. Thankfully it wasn't a particularly rare disc.



Was it the single (2-disc) release or Master Grade box? The former is currently on sale on suruga-ya for only a couple hundred yen, not sure if you can get stuff from Japan in Australia right now though: https://www.suruga-ya.jp/product/detail/122002123 (LMK if you need me to forward it to you, would do it at cost+shipping)

The Master Grade box is only like 1000 yen, too. Hard to believe these are so cheap now, I think I spent like 8000 yen for all 3 movies back before the mono DVD releases were announced.

I've had my fair share of cracked discs, including Enemy of the State, Notting Hill, The Avengers, Tin Cup, Deep Impact, Congo, The Toxic Avenger, and a few others that I'm forgetting now. Terrible packing. All avoidable.

I also had a disc with what seemed a very minor crack on the edge of it, splinter whilst playing in a machine. Totally my own fault for even trying it. Lesson learned the hard way. The force was such that the tray was forced part way open.

I have one cracked disc that I bought on ebay, a really nice one. If it was Independence Day, I would not care but it was a Japanese LD with Pluto cartoons. It is a very small crack so the first five minutes or so don't play properly but that is annoying enough. Such a nice disc.
Unfortunately, the crack is on side 1. Side 2 is OK but that one does not have any contents ( dead side ).

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00330/PI ... -and-Pluto)

It's the 2 disc release. Thanks for your kind offer. EMS is still no-go for Aus and US still. I think my proxy is finally about to offer DHL. I've had about 20 CDs and an LD boxset of Bubblegum Crisis among other things with them for months in storage.

Actaully while watching Movie I for the latest time (when I discovered the crack) it really bugged me how choppy the story was. How huge gaps are obviously missing. I think I need to get the TV box utlimately, especially since a member here went to the trouble of converting subs to .SSA for it.

Yeah, I imagine that watching the TV series first would be best, just as people in Japan generally did. I watched the movies first like you, since they were the only way First Gundam was available in Japanese in the US back in the late 90's. Didn't see the series until the mid-2000's when I was able to rent the Japanese DVDs. The LD box came down in price after that, but never got it myself.