I learned the hard way by having a fragile item (glass, ceramic, porcelain) that I packed very well for safe shipping arrive in pieces, then I had to deal with the whole nightmare insurance claim process. Keep in mind when shipping fragile items that your box will be routinely- dropped, thrown and tumbled, possibly crushed but there is nothing you can do about that rare occurrence. The danger of rough package handling of course only gets ALOT worse during holiday shipping time- November & December. So now I have learned to double box highly rare or highly valuable fragile items, or if not rare or highly valuable but fragile, at least pack the item very, very well in bubble wrap, use a large enough box to allow a minimum 2" thick of bubble wrap inside the box on all sides. Double boxing- First I pack the fragile item very well in bubble wrap in the first box, place this box in the outer box with 2-3" of bubble wrap all around the inner box. This will nearly guarantee the fragile item arrives safely, whereas not double boxing no matter how well packed in bubble wrap, you take a significant chance the item arrives broken. I would guess about 1/3 of all fragile items on earth have been destroyed only due to poor packing since the internet/selling websites began in the mid 1990s. Finally, I heard a rumor that shipping process workers and/or delivery people intentionally ignore FRAGILE type stickers and in fact treat packages so marked extra rough, out of spite, but this is just a rumor I heard about. It could be true so now I don't use any type of FRAGILE sticker, as they may be malevolently acknowledged or not even considered, in other words your FRAGILE sticker package is treated exactly the same as all boxes with no FRAGILE type sticker, or at least you should assume so.
