Gifts, samples, second-hand: when eFiling does not apply
Marking a sold parcel as a gift is the oldest idea in cross-border selling, and CPSC answered it directly.
Updated 11 October 2026 · 6 min read
A real gift is outside the rule
CPSC draws the line at the transaction, not at the parcel. A product sent by one consumer to another, outside any sale, is a noncommercial transaction and eFiling does not apply to it.
« eFiling is not required for noncommercial transactions between one consumer outside the United States to another consumer in the United States. »Two conditions hide in that sentence. The sender has to be a consumer rather than a business, and CPSC adds that the sender must have had physical possession of the product before sending it. A shop dispatching from stock is not in this case, whatever the customs form says.
It is worth being precise about why this matters beyond honesty. CPSC says it uses the filed data to score the risk of a shipment, which means a declaration is read, kept and compared with what the parcel turns out to contain. A false one is not a shortcut past a queue; it is a written statement about goods entering a country, signed by the person who sent them.
A sale on a marketplace is commercial, full stop
This is the sentence that ends the hopeful reading. CPSC names marketplaces explicitly, including sales between two private individuals.
« Transactions involving the sale of a product, including sales by one consumer to another consumer through an online marketplace or other sales platform, are commercial transactions and are not covered by this exemption. »So a Vinted sale, an Etsy order, an eBay listing sold by a private seller: all commercial for this purpose. Declaring one as a gift does not make it one, and the declaration is signed by you.
Second-hand, vintage, deadstock
Age matters, but not the way people expect. What counts is whether the product was made before or after the rule that would cover it came into force.
« For used products that were manufactured prior to the effective date of a CPSC rule, ban, or standard, a certificate is not required, and therefore eFiling does not apply. »« If a used product was manufactured after the effective date of a CPSC rule, ban or standard, a certificate is required and if the product is imported as part of a commercial transaction, eFiling also applies. »For a genuinely old piece the exemption is real, and CPSC says such entries may use Disclaim A even though nothing is required. For a two-year-old toy resold as second-hand, it is not: the rule existed when the toy was made, so the certificate is expected.
The practical difficulty is proving the date. Nobody asks a vintage dealer for a birth certificate, but the exemption rests on the manufacturing date, so it helps to keep whatever establishes it: a label, a hallmark, a catalogue reference, a supplier invoice. In doubt, treating the piece as regulated and declaring accordingly costs a few minutes; getting it wrong costs a parcel.
« Disclaim A: product is not regulated by this agency »Samples that will never be sold
Sending a sample to a buyer, a fair or a laboratory is a different case again, and the exemption is narrow: it holds only while the product stays out of American commerce.
« do not need to comply with CPSC product safety requirements »One more case sits beside it and is easy to miss, because it is about what the product becomes rather than what it is: a part that is not sold to consumers as it stands, but goes into further assembly or manufacturing in the United States.
« eFiling of a certificate is not required when the imported product is a component of a consumer product that is not packaged, sold, or held for sale to, or for use by, consumers, but rather the part will be used in further assembly or manufacturing in the United States. »CPSC expects the importer to be able to demonstrate it - by documents showing where the sample ends up, or by marking the product so it cannot be sold. If the sample is later sold, the exemption never applied.
Where that leaves a European shop
In practice, almost every parcel a shop sends is commercial, so the exemptions above rarely apply to the thing you are worried about. What does apply, often, is something else entirely: no rule names your product, so no certificate is required and the parcel carries a declaration instead.
That is the first thing our questions establish, before anything is paid for. If your product is in that case, you leave with the declaration and the annex, and never write a certificate at all.
The mistake we see most often is the opposite of fraud: a seller who assumes everything is covered, buys testing they did not need, and delays a launch by a month. The exemptions are narrow, but the space where no rule names your product at all is wide, and it is decided by what the product is rather than by what it costs.