I know eBay has “eBay envelope” for like certain collectibles but that’s limited by category (that service also has never worked for me), so perhaps this seller just has a custom shipping rule that is that low? But they would lose money on a sale like this. I suppose the hope could be that people buy multiple items at once if they have plenty of (in this case) retro games

Edited - added screen shot of low end rate costs for ground advantage and media mail

  • a_jeering_serpent@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    In the us the postal service has media mail, bit this seems low even for that. It’s likely they are in a member nation of the UN’s universal postal union (192 members!). One of the agreements between members is to deliver or forward on mail from all other UPU members. This can appear initially as a financial loss due to the postage rates and volumes from/to some member jurisdictions, but the members reimburse each other and various fees are assessed. This is a vastly oversimplified explanation, but it’s an incredibly convoluted system even after many many revisions. The Wikipedia page for the UPU goes into some history and much more detail. The section Terminal Dues give more detail better than I can. The subsection on Modifications specifically but there are only two relatively brief subsections under Terminal Dues.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

    • LLMhater1312@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Interesting idea, I wonder is this why packages from cheap chinese sellers are a thing? For this particular eBay listing - I found this company’s headquarters in Miami, FL so probably not the case here?