Question about shipping refractor

I'm handling the liquidation of my grandfather's estate and he left behind a few telescopes I'm going to sale. There is one in particular that appears to be worth a good bit of money and I doubt I will be able to find a local buyer. It is a Zeiss APQ 100/1000 with mount and tripod. I'm really struggling to figure out how I would need to package this in order to ship it. It doesn't have a case so I would have to package it up really well.

So my question is, what shipper do you guys normally use for items like this? UPS? FedEx? Given the size and value should I look into packing it in a crate and shipping it freight? How should I go about estimating shipping costs before listing this for sale? I'd like to figure out how I'm going to ship it before I list it on the classifieds here.

Thanks

Mark, FYI, here's as (old) ad right from this site: http://www.astromart.com/classifieds/details.asp?classified_id=405555 Zeiss is indeed right up there for quality and reputation. When I ship high-end stuff, I either buck up and build custom crate myself, of pay the UPS Store to do the packing and shipping. They (UPS) are expensive but good. And seems to me that insuring it with them provides another level of care in transport! Tom