Shipping a Container or Starting Fresh
Both of them have a good reason, and neither of them is wrong.
Picture a couple named Harvey and Thelma, 66 and 65, moving to a city in Mexico. Harvey wants to ship the furniture. He sat at the oak desk for thirty years and cannot see a new place without it. Thelma wants to start fresh. She says a new apartment deserves new rooms. Both of them have a good reason, and neither of them is wrong.
They agreed to put numbers on the table before they argued further. Harvey wrote down a rough value of the furniture they would ship, US$10,000 new, as an illustration. Then they looked at what each path costs.
The first version of their list compared what the furniture would sell for with a year of extra rent. Thelma pointed out that it left out the main cost of starting fresh, which is that they would still need furniture in the new apartment. So they wrote each path as money out and money in, and made sure each path ended with a furnished home.
| Path | Money out | Money in | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ship the furniture | A shipper's written quote (ask for three and write it here) | None | Minus the quote |
| Sell it here, buy basics there | About US$4,000 for a basic set, new or used (an illustration) | US$1,000 to US$3,000 (furniture often resells for 10% to 30% of its new price) | −US$1,000 to −US$3,000 |
| Sell it here, rent a furnished place | US$90 to US$180 a month more than the US$900 unfurnished rent, so US$1,080 to US$2,160 in the first year | US$1,000 to US$3,000 | −US$1,160 to +US$1,920 in the first year, and the premium continues |
The table showed Harvey what the quote has to beat. Shipping all of it wins only if the quote comes in under about US$1,000 to US$3,000, which is what starting fresh costs when they buy basics. The last line was the one they did not know. Harvey phoned shippers and learned that quotes often follow the volume, so each piece left behind lowers the price. That changed the question. It was no longer all of the furniture or none. They could choose.
Thelma agreed to ship the oak desk, a few boxes of books and the good knives. Harvey agreed that the sofa and the bed could go. These few pieces were worth more to them than a replacement would be, and a small shipment costs far less than a full one. The dining table, which had hosted thirty years of dinners, went to Harvey's nephew Andre, 30, who had just bought a small house with an empty dining room.
Andre ran his hand along the edge. "There is a burn mark here," he said.
"Your aunt's casserole, long ago," Harvey said. "Now it is your casserole."
Harvey had thirty years of dinners at that table, and he was there on the afternoon it went through Andre's front door.
You could…
- Ask three shippers for a written quote, once with all of the furniture and once with only the pieces you would miss.
- Price what it would cost to buy a basic set where you are going, and add what your furniture could resell for.
- Set the quote beside that net figure, and ship only what is worth more to you than the difference.
- Offer the larger pieces to family or friends before listing them for sale.
Which piece would you ship across an ocean, and which would you hand to someone you love? Add your choice in the comments. A reader about to measure rooms for a container could use your list.
Figures are estimates for planning, based on public data.
Tell us in the comments