RECORD RAGE!!! ... or why can't people safely ship a simple record album?!?

I was lucky, too, on the grease stain front. But, a pizza box? Talk about not giving a clam.

 

Sergio, are those ceiling tiles in the pic?

 

There seems to be a few different names (and uses) for this in different areas of the world, in portuguese we just call it "placas de esferovite", in english I think it's called "expanded polystyrene boards", and it can be used for many purposes, one of them is for sound (or temperature) isolation of walls and ceilings. It's extremely light, actually it's perfect for packaging, nothing else can provide the same type of protection around an LP with such low weight. I've never seen anyone else using it for LP packaging, I guess that's because of cost in part, but mostly because of the hard work and long packaging times involved with it...

 

I've actually made some refinements to my packaging technique, now instead of using the approximately 12" sized boards, I cut relatively wide slices that are the same length but narrower than those big boards, then I attach them to the inside of the box with double sided tape, two slices on the bottom side by side, and another two slices on the top (one for each flap of the opening top of the box), and I'm using more cardboard strips on all four sides to create even further distance from the box outer limits. With the air-bubble-wrap and sometimes an additional plastic outer sleeve, I pretty much nailed the perfect balance of protection and weight, all sides are covered, all surfaces protected, all corners away from crash spots... I love it

 

I hate the guys that tape a trash bag and/or newspaper around the record. They mean well by protecting the record but I have to cut the damn tape off and each time I risk damaging the record.