Ken,

All I can say in answer to that is that I have had to pay customs quite a few times over the last thirty years, I must have been damm unlucky. I now only purchase overseas if I can't get it here. I do agree though, that the cost to the Australian modeller is pretty high, those in the US don't realise how lucky they are. It appears that the Australian distributors require their Mercedes to be new each year!

As an example how the Ozzie modeller is hard done by I decided to purchase a Hangar 9 CAP 232, which came in about $990 AUD. A bit of shopping around prior to purchase found the model at $465 AUD, although now called Minicraft with Hangar 9 instructions, go figure!

Regards,

Peter