Sharing my experience for those who dont know about over seas ordering.
Just wanted to let people know you can get a much better deal from Over seas sites during initial pre order. I love how Brian Kilby from RFC talks about how he orders from BBTS all the time. I just dont understand why you would want to waste money.
Also please note with Anime Export you get a 30% off retail discount and HLJ 20% off retail. The difference with AE is you must pay in FULL. As far as Pile of loot option , they both offer it. I like AE better because they dont seem to enforce the 60 day shipping rule where HLJ strictly enforces it. This means after your item has been in the "pile of loot or Private Warehouse" for more than 60 days they will cancel you item and provide instant store credit in your account automatically.
I've been using both sites for years and for me I just pay in full at Anime Export which gives me a 30% discount off retail. Here is the breakdown as to what I ordered on 10/2/2015 paying in full for each figure.
YEN was higher than today with a paypal rate of 1 dollar = 116.9 YEN
I paid 100.53 USD for Shockwave
I paid $47.87 USD for Rodimus
I paid 107.71 USD for Ultra Magnus
Total 256.11 USD
So yes I paid in full for these figures last October, but for that I received a 30% discount off retail.
Today with Shockwave being in stock I decided to ship all three figures. I clicked ship all items in my AE account and within about 1 hour received an email stating my shipment options are available. Basically AE will provide you shipping options. I logged back into my AE account and now I see two shipping options. One is 5400yen which is the "FAST" option, or 5000YEN which is the "SLOW" option. So I always use the FAST option which is worth the extra 400 YEN. This shipment will arrive within 4 Days to the US and delivered via USPS Express international mail.
So at today's Paypal rate 1 dollar = 109YEN
I paid 49.44 USD to ship these three LARGE figures Express international.
The funny thing is USPS rates have gone way up here so if I were to sell a figure as large as Ultra Magnus and send Priority mail it would cost me around 35.00 USD to ship him. I just dont know if people understand how expensive it is to ship now because they not only calculate weight, but also the measurement of the box you are using to ship.
Anyway my point is 49.44 is very cheap to send three large figures from Japan to the US.
I hope this helps someone who is interested in saving money and the art of Stacking figures to get a better shipping deal.
/
Adding BBTS prices
Shockwave = 160.00
Ultra Magnus = 190.00
Hot Rod = 75.00
Slow ground shipping = 11.00
Total 436.00
VS
Over seas AE
Shockwave = 100.53
Ultra Magnus = 107.71
Hot Rod = 47.87
Fast Ship =49.44 USD
Total = 305.55
Difference of
130.45 USD saved
