Quality Sporrans for less money

[OC Richard]

An interesting fur Evening sporran by L&M Highland (Nova Scotia) for a very low price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/22595977800...Bk9SR473vbekYw

[Father Bill]

An interesting fur Evening sporran by L&M Highland (Nova Scotia) for a very low price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/22595977800...Bk9SR473vbekYw

Lovely indeed, but as an officer in Scottish Rite, there is no connection whatever that I can see despite the label.

[OC Richard]

Lovely indeed, but as an officer in Scottish Rite, there is no connection whatever that I can see despite the label.

Yes Ebay sellers have fanciful descriptions fairly often.

One frequently amusing thing is how any sporran, be it military, civilian, or even child-sized, will be listed as a "military officer's sporran". (There were evidently some very small officers back then!)

The fad has pretty much gone away, but for a while every old moth-eaten civilian Highland jacket or kilt or sporran was being listed as a "Boer War officer's ____".

Just why dozens of Boer War officer's things survived for everything from some other war, or rank, remains a mystery.

[OC Richard]

Sadly "may not post to the USA" but a high-quality older Scott & Son seal sporran.

It has the higher-grade silverplate cantle made in five separate pieces (the three bosses are screwed on).

The fact that is has the back of the cantle scored across forming a sort of leather hinge, a feature of the original 1953 Patent sporrans, yet lacks the Patent stamp, helps date it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/395140991...ndition=4%7C10

[Hauge]

Sadly "may not post to the USA" but a high-quality older Scott & Son seal sporran.

It has the higher-grade silverplate cantle made in five separate pieces (the three bosses are screwed on).

The fact that is has the back of the cantle scored across forming a sort of leather hinge, a feature of the original 1953 Patent sporrans, yet lacks the Patent stamp, helps date it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/395140991...ndition=4%7C10

A real beauty!

But, as seller won't send to Denmark either, my guess is, it's a UK only sale?

[Troglodyte]

A real beauty!

But, as seller won't send to Denmark either, my guess is, it's a UK only sale?

Posting from the UK to Europe has become very problematic since Brexit.

My own experience of sending items has been more than enough to 'black-list' European countries, as the EU now regards Britain in the same light as African countries.

I recently sent a rather splendid vitage kilt to Holland, using tracked and insured Royal Mail international service. The package left Aberdeen the same day, and the tracking showed it had arrived at its destination in Amsterdam the following morning - what I would expect for normal service.

The package was then held for 28 days by Dutch Customs.

Both the recipient and I challenged the Dutch postal servce over this, and were both told the same thing - since Brexit, Customs have been instructed to hold items from the UK for the maximum time. Brexit has to be seen as a failure, you see.

On the 29th day, the kilt was released and delivered as it should have been, but both me as the sender from Scotland, and the recipient in Europe were seething over this idiotic spite by officialdom.

Ebay has its own rules and timescales for delivery, and the 'rights' of the customer now make it very unattractive to sell internationally from the UK. Perhaps the seller of this sporran has already had experience of international selling, and thinks never again...

My experience of sending items from the UK to both Canada and the US are very favourable - to Canada it is much quicker and cheeper (by almost 50 per cent) and US Customs seems to process their through-put very slowly. Two to three weeks is what I expect a package to take to get to North America, but it can take much longer and often does.

Please do not blame the seller in these matters..!

[Tomo]

I guess it varies - I regularly ship stuff from the UK to Estonia.

I have not experienced deliberate delays at customs (in fact I have them very helpful) but there are always some costs (VAT needs to be paid on pretty much anything over 45 Euro, including the shipping costs - and there may be additional duty and admin fees) and the customs declarations can be a pain (I still have to do a declaration on this side - even if the "exporter" has already done this in the UK).

So it's better for me to either buy in the EU or if I buy in the UK have things sent to my folks and collect it next time I am back to avoid the cost (sometime more than the items themselves) and the hassle of making the declarations and trying to find the right tariff codes.