The Energon Pub

First of all, hello there, and sorry: this is my very first post. I didn't see an Introductions section anywhere, so I figured, whatever, might as well cut to the chase.


I'm from Portugal, and became a Transformers fan not too long ago, and (obviously) got interested in collecting some the toys. Unfortunately, Portugal has a distinct lack of "good" toy retailers (unless you live near a Toys R Us - there are exactly 3 in the whole country), and the only Transformers toys I've ever been able to find are from the movie line. And even then, you're lucky if you manage to find an Optimus Prime or a Bumblebee.
So I looked it up on eBay. I'm no expert, but most of the prices were fair enough for a-few-years-old toys, say, from 10 to 40-something dollars, even. Okay. But then I looked at the shipping charges... 40$? 50$? 60$? My jaw dropped.

I know that overseas shipping tends to be more expensive, it only makes sense. But, while I'm still new to shopping on eBay, I did already buy a few things and searched for others, including several action figures, comics, My Little Ponies and Barbie dolls (yeah, yeah, I know). And with a few exceptions, none of the overseas shipping charges for these rise to the levels that I see on Transformers. And since it seems most of the ones I want aren't exactly available around here (that includes European eBay sites), and I'm not THAT desperate, that means I'm royally screwed.

So my question is: why is shipping so expensive?

Keep in mind, though, I'm not exactly complaining. Some sellers do have cheaper charges, but those are few and far between. I do know that some include tracking and insurance, and that some people throw a fit if their box isn't in 100% mint condition, AND that sometimes you can talk to the seller and negotiate the shipping price. My problem is, I don't see how all of that adds up to, say, charging 40$ to ship a 20$ toy.
Any thoughts?


I'm sorry for writing so much, by the way. It's an annoying quirk of mine.

A lot of things can be factored into shipping costs. Taxes and various other things drive up shipping costs to other countries. So the only cost we have to deal with is paying the various forms of transport that get our goods to us.

The US doesn't require taxes on toys and hobby goods, but I don't know about Portugal. You might want to go to a post office and look up the rules about shipping in your country.

You can even email the seller personally to see if the shipping charges are different from what the website says.

LyralioRC wrote:So my question is: why is shipping so expensive?

From an Australian perspective i've always found shipping from the US to be pretty expensive. I can get something shipped from the UK for about half the price.

That aside, there are also a number of E-Bay sellers who like to charge "handling fees". They basically charge you for them to walk down to the post office to post your items off.

Also, if you see an item pretty cheap, and really high postage costs, this is a seller's way of avoiding E-Bay fees. E-Bay only charge their fees based on the final selling price, so they sell it cheaply, pay less E-Bay fees, then make up their money in shipping costs.

What i'd do is find out how much the figure would cost in retail, ask someone here to work out the dimensions or even work out the postage and this will give you a good base figure for the future. That way you can look for items that are roughly around that price and if you're getting a good deal or not.

I would say some of it is people capitalizing on peoples want for certain figures and that some people in your same situation will pay the high shipping(greed).

Some countries charge import taxes if something isn't marked as a gift, that could be a cause for the higher shipping. I've noticed in a lot of auctions that many sellers won't sell to places like Italy, but I don't know if it is because of high shipping, taxes or something else. I'm not sure if Portugal is like Italy in the same manner though.

I found it weird when I shipped a small padded envelope to the Netherlands about 5 years ago and it only cost me like .97 (yes ninety-seven cents) from Wisconsin. It would have cost more to ship across the state, I didn't argue though.

A lot of sellers use the Ebay postage calculator, with varying results. Always message the seller direct.

Have a look at UK based retailers www.kapow-toys.com and www.toyzandgamez.com, both ship to Europe and are widely used by UK fans. You won't get charged for customs either as they're within the EU.

Failing that, from a UK persepctive, I've always found site sponsor www.tfsource.com to be very good internationally and they're my preferred website/store Stateside.

Be sure to stick around the boards and contribute, over time you'll build up contacts worlswide and find that people will be more than happy to help you source stuff at cost.

Hope that helps and welcome to the boards

Hi LyraloiRC... I feel your pain, also being a European TF fan. I also do a lot of TF shopping on e-Bay and I too often have to frown at shipping prices offered by US sellers. I've had pretty comparable medium-sized packages shipped to me for prices between $12.00 and $40.00. It often depends on insurance costs added to the shipping, packaging costs, on the service used for shipping (priority or not) and of course on the shipping company used (USPS, Fedex, DHL etc.). And sometimes it really does just depend on greed of the seller. It's always preferable to get a shipping quote from the seller if nothing is mentioned with the item description. Still, considering European sellers often charge exorbitant prices just for the items they are selling, often, importing items from the US with shipping costs can still be (a lot) cheaper than buying locally.

DISCHARGE wrote:(...)
Some countries charge import taxes if something isn't marked as a gift, that could be a cause for the higher shipping. I've noticed in a lot of auctions that many sellers won't sell to places like Italy, but I don't know if it is because of high shipping, taxes or something else. I'm not sure if Portugal is like Italy in the same manner though.(...)

Import taxes are charged to the recipient of the package on delivery, but not to the sender, so import charges shouldn't be a factor at all in shipping prices. By the way, marking packages as a gift doesn't always work with larger packages, because true gift value must remain under a certain value, and customs are often curious about 'cheap gifts' in packages with high shipping costs. Although I have had surprisingly large and expensive items slip through the nets now and again...
The reason why a lot of sellers don't want to ship to Italy is because a relatively large amount of packages sent top Italy get 'lost' in Italy (or, as it is known to most people: stolen). It seems Italian postal services are notorious for 'losing' packages, with all the negative consequences (reimbursement of costs) for the seller.

Thanks for all the answers and support, everyone! Really helps one feel welcome here!

Yeah, I figured those would be some of the reasons. It's also kind of refreshing to know I'm not the only one having this problem. Sad, true, but refreshing nonetheless. I guess the best thing I can do is, well, pick out which toys I want most first, and take Burn's advice: make a few calculations and dig through all of the available options until I find a sensible deal.

Thanks again, Pretender Skywarp, for the websites. They'll be a great help. I already knew about TFSource from their ads on the Wiki, but I kind of chickened out of going there when I saw the "Where MINT BOX means MINT!" slogan. I guess after I roamed eBay so much, I took it to mean something along the lines of "Our boxes are incredibly well packed, which means our shipping charge is HUGE". Hehe... Glad to know it's not the case.