We keep inventory.  Unlike many web stores, we keep around a week or more inventory of nearly everything in our warehouse.  Currently, 99% of our orders ship the same (received before 3PM CST) or the next (received after 3PM CST) business day.  In an industry where almost everything is imported by ship, shortages happen, and you can't speed up a container ship.  The only way you know you can reliably fill orders is if you have inventory.  If a customer buys from a web store that just forwards orders to distributors for drop shipment (and there are many of those), delivery can be delayed if the store's distributor is out of stock and waiting for the next container ship to come in.  That is not likely to happen here, we've invested a lot of money in inventory to make sure we can deliver.  I intend to add more low volume, special order and built to order items in the near future, but they will always be identified as special order items, with an accurate estimate of delivery times.    

Shipping. We currently ship UPS, insured, with tracking numbers, or Priority Mail, insured without tracking numbers. We try to keep the costs down as much as possible. Please see the shipping page for details, click the button on the left.

Corrections. Please note that all orders will be reviewed for correctness. Due to all the possibilities for errors in processing and hacks from outside sources, prices and shipping charges will be reviewed for accuracy and corrected (after emailing you) when necessary. The two most common problems that show up are UPS servers allowing impossible shipping choices, and customers entering "Customer Pickup" as a shipping option when they live 1000 miles away.  Believe it or not, the UPS shipping servers, which our order process gets shipping rates from, will allow you to request having a truck drive your package from Chicago to Hawaii (glub glub).