Thanks for the replies all.
Just use escrow... 1% is a small price to pay to not get robbed, killed, or stressed the hell out.
How does this work? Previously I used escrow where the person escrowed the BTC, and I shipped the physical items directly to the buyer with insurance.
But as mentioned in the original post, I'm not sure how you would even ship a high value item - most shippers won't deal with valuable items. Shipping directly to the seller seems to be very risky as they could claim non-delivery or that the shipment was not as described, so it would need to be shipped to the person providing the escrow, and they would have to forward it. Is that right? I had a look at the escrow threads here, but they seem to be mostly outdated.