The Guide to Parcel-Shipping Your Artworks – Artsy

This guide provides an easy way to estimate shipping costs when using standard shipping providers.

For more information on international shipping during the COVID-19 outbreak, read this article.

This guide is intended to help you choose a shipping provider and set shipping prices for your works sold through Buy Now and Make Offer.

To set shipping prices for your work, go to your Artworks tab in CMS and edit the
desired work listed with Buy Now or Make Offer.

Read on to learn more about parcel-shipping artworks.

Which Provider Should I Use?

Deciding which shipping service to use can be challenging. Ultimately, this should be decided by you based on the value of the work, what you feel most comfortable with, and what you think your collector will be satisfied with.

For most works (excluding difficult to pack or high-value items), we find that most galleries use UPS, FedEx, or another standard shipping provider for fast, efficient, and cost-effective service. If you use one of these providers, take care to pack your work well and with high-quality materials. How your collector receives the work they bought shapes the way they experience it. A poorly packaged work can lead to buyer’s remorse or even damage to the work. We also recommend purchasing insurance whenever you ship.

UPS has a handy packing and shipping guide you can use to safely pack a work for shipping.

How Should I Price Shipping?

Free or inexpensive shipping is one of the best things you can offer to help sell your works.

Works with free shipping are 40% more likely to sell on Artsy than those without. When possible, we recommend incorporating shipping costs into your works. Even if you simply price shipping into the overall price of the work, the psychological value of free shipping is still important.

If you must include a shipping price, price it as competitively as you can. We find that galleries with above average shipping costs on works receive fewer sales than those with competitive pricing.

To help you set shipping costs on your works, we’ve compiled this shipping table of average local and domestic interstate shipping costs.

Estimated Domestic Shipping Costs in the United States

Local

Ground: $17 box, $12 tube
3 day: $45 box, $22 tube
2 day: $52 box, $28 tube
Overnight: $70 box, $45 tube

Long Distance

Ground: $47 box, $23 tube
3 day: $105 box, $56 tube
2 day: $158 box, $81 tube
Overnight: $236 box, $136 tube

Box is 5 x 30 x 24 in, 25 lbs or less; Tube is 3 x 3 x 36 in, 10 lbs.

Add $10 for each $1,000 of insurance.

Long Distance and local shipping estimates were compiled in 2019 using an average of FedEx and UPS prices for shipping between and within major U.S. metropolitan areas (New York City, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles).

Estimated Domestic Shipping Costs in the United Kingdom

Inside the U.K

2 day: £9 box, £6 tube
Overnight: £11 Box, £8 tube

Box is 13 x 76 x 61 cm, 10 kg or less; Tube is 8 x 8 x 90 cm, 5 kg.

Add £12 for each £1,000 of insurance.

Long-Distance and local shipping estimates were compiled in 2019 using an average of UPS prices for shipping between and within major U.K. metropolitan areas (London, Belfast, Edinburgh, Leeds).

Next Steps

Start listing works with Buy Now and Make Offer.

Go to your Artworks tab, click “Edit” on the desired work, and scroll down until you see the checkboxes for Buy Now and Make Offer. More detailed instructions here.

Go to Artworks

Adjust your shipping prices.

Go to your Artworks tab and click “Edit” on the desired work. Scroll down to the “Shipping” section and adjust your price or add free shipping. More detailed instructions here.