Just a heads-up for anyone who is going to buy cards from ebay sellers that are situated in the USA or UK and make use of ebay’s global shipping program (GSP); any costs related to this service have gone up dramatically.
In case you don’t know, there are 2 ways for ebay sellers from UK and US to ship items to other countries:
Either use no GSP (in this case you will have to go to your customs office and pay import fees and customs fees once the item arrives in your country)
Use GSP (the buyer pays any additional costs right when paying for the item on ebay and doesn’t have to pay import fees in their own country)
While normal import fees are usually ~21% of the declared value of the package + shipping costs, GSP now costs ~40% of the price of the item.
That means, if you buy a card for $1000 from the US and happen to live somewhere else, you’d have to pay $1400, not just the $1210 that you would pay if the seller didn’t use GSP.
I’m pretty sure that the hefty increase is due to the Coronavirus situation and I hope things calm down soon, because if anything is having a negative influence on the Pokemon market right now, it’s this.
Do you have an example link? This might be because the item costs above a certain value like 150€ - there might be additional fees in addition to VAT. I just saw a 130$ booster box that has 30$ GSP cost, 40% would be around 50$. 40% is the usual cost for expensive items in Germany.
Here’s one where the GSP costs are 40%. It’s under ‘Einfuhrabgaben’. It’s definitely possible that GSP costs go up for more expensive items. But that’s not good either because it’s the more expensive items where the percentage of import fees matters most. Paying an additional 40% for a $100 card is doable, but paying an additional $400 for a $1000 card hurts. Imagine what other collectibles you could have bought with $400.
Ok so there seems to be a misunderstanding about what these import costs actually are. Using UK as an example, any item over £15 (£20 if marked as gift) will have VAT added of 20%. This is NOT import tax. Import tax is paid on items of £135 or higher, wich is 3,5%. The numbers vary from country to country but the principle is the same in most of europe. So expensive items will get VAT charges AND import costs.
Don’t buy off eBay.
Simply list what you want here on E4 and offer to pay friends/family. 90% of the members here would ship with a minimal customs amount. Make sure the member here is established and in good standing.
Legal? Nope, but screw the wasteful governments;)
