Lost Sale, Shipping Blues

Lost Sale, Shipping Blues

I was contacted by a man saying he and his wife had seen my "Sunfish" painting on display in the lobby of Portland's Academy Theater (see previous post) and wanted to buy it. When I returned the email and received another I learned that the couple were tourists from Detroit, MI, and already on the road down the Oregon coast, so could I please ship it to them. I brought a canvas the same 24 x 30 size to the local UPS office to get a good guesstimate of the shipping charge and it turned out to be more than $100. When I relayed this information to the travelers, well, I never heard from them again. The cost was more than twice what I had paid for a similar sized-painting to be shipped all the way to Massachusetts a little more than a year earlier. Here's what I heard -- "The rates have gone up a lot."
It's a bummer to think that shipping charges may scare potential Art patrons away, especially for someone who has so few. 
Creative solutions welcomed.