I am impressed with the amount of new information and photographs, many in full color, contained in these books. It will take me a long time to appreciate all of the new content.
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Nice but have to think twice at $215 each plus shipping.
Looks to be a spectacular resource, but one I'll likely have very little personal use for. Can't afford the reference, let alone those items it is referencing!
Jim
I was just looking through the forum and saw your post, I treated myself to the three books for my birthday. They are just fantastic. I have had many reference books for different collections over the years and these are going to answer lots of questions over the years. The cost is about 3 nice engines so not as bad as they seem. I understand there were reprints of Marklin catalogs available at one time I would have liked to have a copy of them.
Gen
Gen:
Did you order them directly from Schiffman's?
Were you able to pay them by credit card?
Did they ship directly to the US?
When I bought the prior edition I had to mail a check to Germany.
Charlie
I also want to order but from the email I got it looks like bank transfer only… if he’d take paypal, he’d have my order as fast as I could send it!
I’m just a dummy with no idea how to do a bank transfer
Nick, Charlie
I ordered directly from Schiffman. The easy part is telling him what you want, I got book 21, 22, and 23. Gave him my address. He sent back how much the three books would be and the shipping in Euros. He shipped them DHL. Be prepared to translate German. Whenever I deal with another country I always send English and a translation into country language as a courtesy and to make sure we communicate. They were nicely packaged. He supplies you with his IBAN - universal account number, you have one also just do not use it, it has routing and account information. He gives you his banks BIC / Swift Number which is the banks identifier, you bank has one also.
Now for the fun part.
1. You could send him a check made out at current Euro rate, but first get his agreement as to how to calculate rate, he may have to pay a fee to cash your check.
2. You go down to your bank with the information he provided and ask to do an international wire transfer. Then depending on your bank size, ours had not done one in over five years, and discover our archaic banking system requires his address, and an address for his bank. None of which is relevant since it is in the IBAN and BIC. Next they will want his account number and they do not know how to decode the IBAN (which may be different for every country). Just google German IBAN and you will be able to decode for your bank. So now you have the form filled out. Oh I forgot about the $70 fee from your bank. It gets better. You are going to pay in Euros so there is an intermediate bank that takes your dollars and converts it to Euros, if you pay in dollars still same a fee, ours was around $30. Now that everything is covered it takes very little time to transfer the money.
3. Did some investigating if there was an on-line system that was less expensive. Yes there was, I think no fee at all or very small around $10 or so. I do not remember what it was. I am sure you can find it with a little digging.
Maybe Skeptic49 can tell a story also.
Best of Luck
Gen
Good info, Gen. Yes, I ordered the books via email and paid by bank wire transfer. My bank offers one free wire transfer a month to customers with a certain bank balance and type of account. Check with your bank on wire transfers. They are not that difficult to accomplish although you may need to provide additional information to your bank such as the the address of Reinhard Schiffmann's bank branch and even his full name and address. I have this info if anyone needs it. Schifffmann sends the books well packed by DHL, which is delivered by USPS in the States. It took a while for my box to arrive, about a month. Gen, as for reproduction Maerklin catalogs, I have only a few originals, but I do have all of the relevant Marklin Machine Age volumes plus a few other books that contain catalogs and much information on steam engines and steam accessories.
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Thanks Gen and Jim for the information.
I have historically used Zoom (an affiliate of PayPal) for international payments for Steam Engines.