Letter kept at the customs

Hi, I have received a letter from the local German customs that they kept a swap letter for me and I should bring the invoice and payment receipt and money for possible taxes to get the letter.
I guess I have to tell them that I didn't pay money for the goods. Should I tell them that there are coins in the letter? Will they believe me that they aren't worth very much? (say 5-10 euros)

They will already know what's in it as the open them anyway. Just go along and be honest, you could also print off the swap sheet and take that along.

This is why on my customs labels I always write "hobby supplies"
I assume the letter is from outside of the EU ? Because I never have to fill in a form for any within

Hi  androl,

Tony has given a proper answer. Customs duties are always based on value. So if it is worth only a few euros they cannot tax you much. As Tony said, if you carry a printout of the swap list, it would prove it is only a small gift exchange between hobbyists and there is nothing commercial about it. Regards,

philip jose

It depends on the country but usually under a certain value there is no customs to be paid. I don't remember how much this was but I think its 15 or 25 Dollars for Germany. So if the coins are only worth 10 Euros then you should be clear and won't be paying anyway.

okay, I went to the office, the officer asked me what's in the letter, how much it is worth and asked me to open it. I showed him the coins and told him about how much of them is legal tender and that the other coins are not valid or very low-value. 22 euro is free to receive, so it was fine for me.

He told me they don't believe the customs declaration on the letter because the sender could write anything on it, and they needed an invoice on the letter to know how much it is worth. - So what's the customs declaration for, anyhow?

Probably they were suspicious because they scanned it and saw metal in it.

Yeah its all down to luck. I used to buy quite a lot of things from the USA to Germany and from 12 packages 2 landed at the German Zoll all of them had contents worth more than $100, so its not for every letter or package that they stop.

The Swiss Post likes to do this stuff too.

Bought a coin from a seller in Germany a while back while I was in the States. Since we were going to Switzerland anyway, we had him mail it to the in-laws. They had to pay 30 Franks customs/duty on the spot when it was delivered. Dunno if that was a steep duty but it was a $300 coin.