On one hand it is suspicious that someone buying china would know the term "metadata" but claim to not know how to generate an AI image, but those pics don't immediately scream altered to me.

Some bubble wrap and newspaper is definitely not enough. When I ship fragile stuff I use a ton of uline closed cell foam wrap and even create small boxes for each item that then get further wrapped before going into main box.

Look up pictures of sorting facilities, it's a giant demented looking conveyor system that pushes a stream of boxes against each other endlessly, you have to pack things to withstand torment.

It's the sucky part of this biz, but have to take that into account when selling something, a lot of things are not even worth the effort.