About crushed seeds.
Since about 1990 I've sent out thousands upon thousands of seeds and only a day ago did someone say they thought that one variety in the #1 coin envelopes I used was crushed, aka, they didn't germinate.
I asked about all the other ones that I sent at the same time in the same envelope but haven't seen an answer yet.
So what I'm saying is the following.
When I send less than maybe 6 seed packs I use just a regular small business envelope and tape the seed packs to a folded over sheet of paper inside. If more than 6, up to 12 I use the larger size business envelope . And If it's an SSE request I enclose the request form as well.
For more seed packs than about 12. then I use a padded mailer.
So until I hear back from the person who said the seeds were crushed of that one variety, and I offered to send more seeds, thru all of these years there hasn't been one problem with crushed tomato seeds.
I used to list a lot of peppers in the SSE YEarbooks and those seeds were more fragile than the tomato seeds.
Many places/folks insist that padded mailers or including bubble wrap is necessary to protect the seeds. But that certainly hasn't been my experience and I know it hasn't been the experience of Craig either.
I bought a roll of bubble wrap at one time, and it's still sitting in the closet.
And I've sent seeds as I describe above all over the world for both SSE requests as well as for seed offers and to friends not associated with seed offers. For many years I was listing hundreds of tomato varieties in the SSE Yearbooks and it wouldn't be uncommon at that time to go thru 2-3 boxes of # 1 coin envelopes each year. There are 500 coin envelopes/box.
So I don't think that crushed seeds is a common problem.