At Michael H.F. Wilkinson, re: shipping.
Don't take it on the plane, you can almost guarantee it'll get ruined by the Samsonite gorillas in the luggage processing areas.
Instead do yourself a favor & ship it via a courier service. You can pack it with plenty of foam padding, insure it, & mail it to said relatives with a signature required. The courier service will be INFINITELY more careful with your stuff than any airline.
Bonus of this is that the airline can't send it to some other part of the world due to a fat fingered routing error, can't charge you extra for wanting to take it with you, can't have fun of throwing it around like a drunk monkey on crack, and can't "lose it" to one of those gorillas with sticky fingers.
