Oh this brings back memories. Back in 2007 my dad needed a new Thinkpad which was like 2.5k EUR in NL vs 1k USD in the USA. He also wanted to push his kids to do something adventurous.
So he bought me (19) and little brother (16) tickets to fly from Amsterdam to New York (2x350) and get a cheap hotel for 2 nights (2x100). All to get a Thinkpad W500(?).
We had a great time. Got chased by a wild homeless person on Staten Island who followed us onto the ferry and we were scared stiff. Also walked all over Manhattan. Went to the Bronx but got stared at a lot so quickly went back to the subway. I can still hear the iconic "Stand clear of the Closing Doors" in my head.
Practically speaking, in 2026, are there any big ticket items an American could buy abroad and have the travel economics work out to their favor?
The big one I do is medical tourism, though I have family in Taiwan. I've done a bit of dental works where the cost in the US is $3k-$5k after insurance, and at Taiwan is maybe $300-$500 (10x diff) cash pay. I've also done scan-all-the-things health spas in a Taiwan hospital for $300-$500, where American equivalents are again 10x.
Labor-intensive products. Custom suits, leather jackets, etc., are so, so much cheaper in places with lower costs of living. For individual items, flights might make it a toss-up, but on the scale of an entire wardrobe, flying to Turkey, having a bunch of tailored clothes made up, and then flying home would definitely work out.
Luxury fashion also tends to have large price differences based on exchange rates and tax.
Before the Great Recession, Europeans, particularly Brits, were flying into NYC with empty suitcases. It helps that NYC has a sales tax exemption for clothes items under a certain amount specifically to facilitate this.
That certainly used to be the case. My dad used to get his suits made in Hong Kong all the time although that became less economical relative to other locations. I don't really wear any of that type of clothing any longer.
Akihabara in Tokyo also used to be a bargain for electronics but I'm not sure that's really true any longer that I've noticed.
I was in Akihabara in Tokyo and other places end of 2024. Prices were nearly US priced but in Yen more or less. No real bargins. Only thing they had going was unique stuff you can't find at all in the mass market garbage we got going on in the US
Much of the "cheap retro games" from Japan are just the games that were more popular there like Paper Mario 64.
It's hard to really properly track these things but over the three trips I've made to Japan over about 12 years. Id say the price rises have been entirely in line with currency and retrogaming inflation.
I.e. I'm not sure it was every as good value as people thought.
I did buy quite a bit over a decade ago but again those were Japan only carts (that wouldn't even run in PAL without a mod chip but would run NTSC-U).
That said it is so much more touristy now I'm sure any arbitrage opertunity would be sweeped away same evening.
Japan is now also making domestic only console versions (at least for switch 2 and I think with PS5 on the cards).
Again this might lead to people thinking consoles are cheap in Japan but these are Japanese only consoles designed to revive the economic doldrum they are in.
A certain version of JP Zelda Link to the Past is needed for speedrunning and “legally” running randomizers. It was far easier and cheaper to find in Tokyo than online.
I think, latterly, my dad was getting them made in Seoul and I had some clothing made there and Singapore as well. But I had admittedly not been in HK for years and years and didn't really need suits in any case.
I remember decades ago hearing stories of motorcycle racers going to japan to get a honda RS125, put it in their luggage and bringing it back to the US.
They are small race-only 2-stroke motorcycles, not sold in the US at all.
Inside the European Union, traveling to other places to buy things from there would only seldom be profitable, when considering the travel expenses.
On the other hand, I frequently buy things from online shops located in many of the EU countries, because very often for various kinds of things that I want to buy I find the best deals in different countries. There are no extra expenses but shipping, so it is frequent to order things from far away, because at a local shop near me they would be more expensive than buying from another country, even with the added shipping.
Weirdly for me: IKEA. I’m within ~240 miles of an IKEA in Canada and an IKEA in the US.
While they’ve started to inflate some items to meet currency conversion rates, some items are still cheaper for me to purchase in Canada directly and bring back to the US.
For instance, even at small scale: one BILLY bookcase, article number 205.220.46, is $90 CAD (~$65.70 US) at IKEA CA and $79 USD at IKEA US.
YMMV coming back across the border but in my experience I just got waived through the border every time I told them I was “just coming back with some cheap crap from IKEA”.
Travelling to a no sales tax state for large purchases. Sales tax is roughly 10%, state with no sales tax is 150 miles away for me.
Doing the math, 300 miles round trip, 30 miles per gallon, $4/gallon for gas, if I'm buying something that costs more than $400 I get a free trip to other state.
Downside is that you're only breaking even for the time, but if you're making a $1,000+ purchase then it's definitely worth the time for me to make the trip.
Nothing fancy here, just difference of prices/taxes in markets.
Same as any YouTube video showing "I flew to Korea and got iPhone 17 Pro Max for cheaper".
So there are individuals who do that and it makes sense (if you enjoy the flying / traveling) and it's not considered "time is money"
There are also common parallel importing in many countries who find a dealer at some country that has the same product in lower local currency, buy bulk and get some discount, then resell it in the country where the official distribution is expensive.
That's why it is possible to find no eSIM/NFC iPhones in some stores (imported from China) or eSIM only ones in regions where you'd expect them to have also physical sim tray.
What’s more interesting was when people were doing this with software sold physically; IIRC Adobe creative suite was so expensive in Australia that it was cheaper to fly to the US and buy it
From what the poster says, it appears that the HDD prices vary extremely inside USA, so you must be careful from where you buy.
The poster says that the 28 TB Seagate HDDs have been bought from Best Buy and B&H for around USD 330.
If I look right now at Amazon USA and Newegg, I see much higher prices, in the range of $600 to $700, so buying from there would be a mistake.
However, the reported price seems too good to be true, because looking now at both the B&H & Best Buy online shops I see prices double in comparison with the claimed $330, and which are in line with Newegg and Amazon USA.
So perhaps the poster was extremely lucky and has succeeded to take advantage of some price that was so low only for a short time.
For comparison, last week I have also bought a 28 TB Seagate Expansion HDD, but in the European Union, for USD 550, which is much lower in comparison with the UK price of almost $770 quoted by the Reddit poster, and also much lower than the prices that are listed today on Amazon USA, Newegg, B&H and Best Buy, which are higher by about 10% than what I paid.
On the other hand the Reddit poster has succeeded to buy 10 such HDDs for a price of only 60% of mine, raised after that to about 74% by the import VAT.
Good for him, but taking into account the prices that I see today at 4 US online shops and the continuous price increases in HDDs, it seems that not many, if anyone, will repeat soon such an achievement.
I have also been triggered to buy the 28 TB HDD last week, even if I do not need it yet, but I will need it later this year, after reading the reports that both WD and Seagate have sold out their yearly production.
The price that I paid was already much higher than some time ago.
There's no real arbitrage opportunity because he booked the hotel and flights on points. It likely would've been considerably more expensive overall if he'd booked in cash.
A long time ago I was in a band, and we opened for a band from Australia that came without any gear and bought it all here. They said it was so much cheaper to buy here that they loved touring in the US just for that reason. They were using vintage collector type stuff that was just harder to find there, but they told me it was the same for new stuff too.
There are small suppliers in Hong Kong who sell refurb enterprise drives at less-exorbitant prices. I've had good luck with this over the years. I stuck with reliable, well-known models like the 4TB HGST, 16TB Seagate Exos (X16), etc.
I used to get them with a year or so of warranty remaining, though last order I got units that must have been from a bulk OEM purchase and weren't warrantied through the manufacturer.
Regardless, I've had good luck this way and failure rates have been within expectations. I started with a few different suppliers to mix inventory in case one source turned out to be a dud, then eventually consolidated on a single supplier who does a great job and has consistently delivered good drives. This method has worked for me for over a decade. Definitely easier than flying around countries, and in my case cheaper than if I'd physically gone to the US like this guy.
In the 80s it was a thing to fly from Europe to the US to buy PC hardware and software. The price differences paid for the (expensive) flight costs and then some.
In the 1980s, a friend got his start by buying packaged software in bulk from the US and reselling it in Europe. The retail price differences were large enough he made bank on it.
It's called arbitrage.
Eventually, other people figured it out and the prices leveled out.
I remember when Adobe Creative Suite came out (I think?) and Australian said that a first class flight to Los Angeles and the American price were less than the Australian price. Hoping Bruce or Sheila [1] Cunningham [2] can chime in
It's been true (maybe still is? Haven't checked) for quite awhile; people I know would always hit up the Apple Store when visiting the USA and return bearing gifts, because the price savings was quite noticeable.
~2012 was the same thing. The usd was very low compared to eur, but the apple store sold things in ~same value in eur + tax. So you could legit buy an airplane ticket (not even a low cost, regular line was ok), visit NY for a weekend and buy a macbook, come back, and end up paying the same amount.
Not just Apple. Around 2010, I bought a tripod and head from the US. Had it delivered to France, paid all import duties and taxes and VAT (I single out VAT because, since taxing is the national sport, it's levied on top of the other taxes, which are also levied on shipping a big hunk of metal). It was around 25% cheaper than buying from a local store.
Here's the kicker: the tripod and head were both produced in Italy. So it was somehow cheaper to ship them halfway around the world and pay import duties twice than to buy locally with no import duty (since it's the EU).
These stories usually have some non-trivial factor that is missing in the article. In this case there's a small visible red flag: the two tourists are British but traveling on B visas, rather than using the visa waiver program. Why? Well according the DHS they both have multi-year overstays in the US.
This doesn't justify the detention they went through. But it also means the lesson of the story is not "random tourists are being detained".
The article clearly says only Bill had overstayed, not Karen. "Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not.".
The B2 visa seems to be because the length of the trip exceeded the ESTA limit, "over two months", perhaps the original plan had been for a longer trip.
Yes, because a DHS statement, published on Twitter of all places, isn't going to be propaganda. I can't think of any instances of them blatantly lying even against their own video evidence in, like, at least a week. /s
When a publication only publishes the "oppresseds" point of view without ever publishing the other view then it is by definition propaganda. The Guardian has been incredibly consistent in this over years now.
Now I am curious, Understand that I am from the states, and consequently have zero intuition as to what a VAT is. But... the hard drive importer is directly using the HDDs and as such is not adding any value to the item, why are they paying a value added tax?
If I had to guess it is probably on the value that could have been added to the item.
It’s just the name for sales tax. Why is there a tax on sales, isn’t a sale a discount? Then is the sales tax negative because it’s the tax on the difference between the full price and the discounted price? You’d probably end up with a refund for buying the thing, unless your state has no sales tax.
Oh this brings back memories. Back in 2007 my dad needed a new Thinkpad which was like 2.5k EUR in NL vs 1k USD in the USA. He also wanted to push his kids to do something adventurous.
So he bought me (19) and little brother (16) tickets to fly from Amsterdam to New York (2x350) and get a cheap hotel for 2 nights (2x100). All to get a Thinkpad W500(?).
We had a great time. Got chased by a wild homeless person on Staten Island who followed us onto the ferry and we were scared stiff. Also walked all over Manhattan. Went to the Bronx but got stared at a lot so quickly went back to the subway. I can still hear the iconic "Stand clear of the Closing Doors" in my head.
Too bad the America from those days is gone.
Which part is gone?
New York City has been a running sine wave of sketchy stories and memories for the past century!
Practically speaking, in 2026, are there any big ticket items an American could buy abroad and have the travel economics work out to their favor?
The big one I do is medical tourism, though I have family in Taiwan. I've done a bit of dental works where the cost in the US is $3k-$5k after insurance, and at Taiwan is maybe $300-$500 (10x diff) cash pay. I've also done scan-all-the-things health spas in a Taiwan hospital for $300-$500, where American equivalents are again 10x.
Labor-intensive products. Custom suits, leather jackets, etc., are so, so much cheaper in places with lower costs of living. For individual items, flights might make it a toss-up, but on the scale of an entire wardrobe, flying to Turkey, having a bunch of tailored clothes made up, and then flying home would definitely work out.
Luxury fashion also tends to have large price differences based on exchange rates and tax.
Before the Great Recession, Europeans, particularly Brits, were flying into NYC with empty suitcases. It helps that NYC has a sales tax exemption for clothes items under a certain amount specifically to facilitate this.
A lot of it is tax fraud, with the new clothes in that suitcase not being properly declared when imported.
That certainly used to be the case. My dad used to get his suits made in Hong Kong all the time although that became less economical relative to other locations. I don't really wear any of that type of clothing any longer.
Akihabara in Tokyo also used to be a bargain for electronics but I'm not sure that's really true any longer that I've noticed.
I was in Akihabara in Tokyo and other places end of 2024. Prices were nearly US priced but in Yen more or less. No real bargins. Only thing they had going was unique stuff you can't find at all in the mass market garbage we got going on in the US
Much of the "cheap retro games" from Japan are just the games that were more popular there like Paper Mario 64.
It's hard to really properly track these things but over the three trips I've made to Japan over about 12 years. Id say the price rises have been entirely in line with currency and retrogaming inflation.
I.e. I'm not sure it was every as good value as people thought.
I did buy quite a bit over a decade ago but again those were Japan only carts (that wouldn't even run in PAL without a mod chip but would run NTSC-U).
That said it is so much more touristy now I'm sure any arbitrage opertunity would be sweeped away same evening.
Japan is now also making domestic only console versions (at least for switch 2 and I think with PS5 on the cards).
Again this might lead to people thinking consoles are cheap in Japan but these are Japanese only consoles designed to revive the economic doldrum they are in.
A certain version of JP Zelda Link to the Past is needed for speedrunning and “legally” running randomizers. It was far easier and cheaper to find in Tokyo than online.
As late as 2012-2015 it was still extremely cheap to get suits in HK, but I'm sure that's no longer the case.
The last time I did it, I bought fabric for $60 USD at Joann's, flew to HK, and gave a guy the fabric for a suit. The suit cost $45 USD to make.
I think, latterly, my dad was getting them made in Seoul and I had some clothing made there and Singapore as well. But I had admittedly not been in HK for years and years and didn't really need suits in any case.
I used this but inverted, the tailor flew to a few European cities and we met him in a hotel room.
He then flew back to Thailand and send the suits.
India, too! The suit I got for my wedding was custom, way cheaper there than here. I need to go back and get a second jacket some day.
I remember decades ago hearing stories of motorcycle racers going to japan to get a honda RS125, put it in their luggage and bringing it back to the US.
They are small race-only 2-stroke motorcycles, not sold in the US at all.
Inside the European Union, traveling to other places to buy things from there would only seldom be profitable, when considering the travel expenses.
On the other hand, I frequently buy things from online shops located in many of the EU countries, because very often for various kinds of things that I want to buy I find the best deals in different countries. There are no extra expenses but shipping, so it is frequent to order things from far away, because at a local shop near me they would be more expensive than buying from another country, even with the added shipping.
[delayed]
Japanese stationary - and I am not kidding.
Weirdly for me: IKEA. I’m within ~240 miles of an IKEA in Canada and an IKEA in the US.
While they’ve started to inflate some items to meet currency conversion rates, some items are still cheaper for me to purchase in Canada directly and bring back to the US.
For instance, even at small scale: one BILLY bookcase, article number 205.220.46, is $90 CAD (~$65.70 US) at IKEA CA and $79 USD at IKEA US.
YMMV coming back across the border but in my experience I just got waived through the border every time I told them I was “just coming back with some cheap crap from IKEA”.
Is your time and car free or do you want to make the trip anyways?
Travelling to a no sales tax state for large purchases. Sales tax is roughly 10%, state with no sales tax is 150 miles away for me.
Doing the math, 300 miles round trip, 30 miles per gallon, $4/gallon for gas, if I'm buying something that costs more than $400 I get a free trip to other state.
Downside is that you're only breaking even for the time, but if you're making a $1,000+ purchase then it's definitely worth the time for me to make the trip.
Nothing fancy here, just difference of prices/taxes in markets. Same as any YouTube video showing "I flew to Korea and got iPhone 17 Pro Max for cheaper".
So there are individuals who do that and it makes sense (if you enjoy the flying / traveling) and it's not considered "time is money"
There are also common parallel importing in many countries who find a dealer at some country that has the same product in lower local currency, buy bulk and get some discount, then resell it in the country where the official distribution is expensive.
That's why it is possible to find no eSIM/NFC iPhones in some stores (imported from China) or eSIM only ones in regions where you'd expect them to have also physical sim tray.
People have been doing this forever.
What’s more interesting was when people were doing this with software sold physically; IIRC Adobe creative suite was so expensive in Australia that it was cheaper to fly to the US and buy it
From what the poster says, it appears that the HDD prices vary extremely inside USA, so you must be careful from where you buy.
The poster says that the 28 TB Seagate HDDs have been bought from Best Buy and B&H for around USD 330.
If I look right now at Amazon USA and Newegg, I see much higher prices, in the range of $600 to $700, so buying from there would be a mistake.
However, the reported price seems too good to be true, because looking now at both the B&H & Best Buy online shops I see prices double in comparison with the claimed $330, and which are in line with Newegg and Amazon USA.
So perhaps the poster was extremely lucky and has succeeded to take advantage of some price that was so low only for a short time.
For comparison, last week I have also bought a 28 TB Seagate Expansion HDD, but in the European Union, for USD 550, which is much lower in comparison with the UK price of almost $770 quoted by the Reddit poster, and also much lower than the prices that are listed today on Amazon USA, Newegg, B&H and Best Buy, which are higher by about 10% than what I paid.
On the other hand the Reddit poster has succeeded to buy 10 such HDDs for a price of only 60% of mine, raised after that to about 74% by the import VAT.
Good for him, but taking into account the prices that I see today at 4 US online shops and the continuous price increases in HDDs, it seems that not many, if anyone, will repeat soon such an achievement.
HDD prices spiked in the past few days: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1r8swim/holy_h...
2026 production from many of the big manufacturers is already completely sold.
Yes, this explains it.
I have also been triggered to buy the 28 TB HDD last week, even if I do not need it yet, but I will need it later this year, after reading the reports that both WD and Seagate have sold out their yearly production.
The price that I paid was already much higher than some time ago.
There's a lot of panic buying going on. Both at the data center level and the consumer level.
My recommendation is that if someone doesn't strictly need the hardware in the next 12 months, it's better to wait it out.
There's no real arbitrage opportunity because he booked the hotel and flights on points. It likely would've been considerably more expensive overall if he'd booked in cash.
Well, that's assuming he wouldn't have used the points for a different trip otherwise.
A long time ago I was in a band, and we opened for a band from Australia that came without any gear and bought it all here. They said it was so much cheaper to buy here that they loved touring in the US just for that reason. They were using vintage collector type stuff that was just harder to find there, but they told me it was the same for new stuff too.
Meanwhile here in the US the drives are double what i paid in 2024 and I'm trying to see which country i can fly to lol
There are small suppliers in Hong Kong who sell refurb enterprise drives at less-exorbitant prices. I've had good luck with this over the years. I stuck with reliable, well-known models like the 4TB HGST, 16TB Seagate Exos (X16), etc.
I used to get them with a year or so of warranty remaining, though last order I got units that must have been from a bulk OEM purchase and weren't warrantied through the manufacturer.
Regardless, I've had good luck this way and failure rates have been within expectations. I started with a few different suppliers to mix inventory in case one source turned out to be a dud, then eventually consolidated on a single supplier who does a great job and has consistently delivered good drives. This method has worked for me for over a decade. Definitely easier than flying around countries, and in my case cheaper than if I'd physically gone to the US like this guy.
I am surprised they aren't Brazillian. Some Brazillian friends from school did that, they would fly to Miami to go shopping, buy game consoles, etc.
Brazilian customs figured this out awhile ago, be too obvious and you’ll get one hell of a fine.
A brazilian coworker bought a suitcase on his trip here (circa 15 years ago) and then bought a playstation and an xbox to bring back.
In the 80s it was a thing to fly from Europe to the US to buy PC hardware and software. The price differences paid for the (expensive) flight costs and then some.
In the 1980s, a friend got his start by buying packaged software in bulk from the US and reselling it in Europe. The retail price differences were large enough he made bank on it.
It's called arbitrage.
Eventually, other people figured it out and the prices leveled out.
Arbitrage opportunities crop up all the time.
I remember when Adobe Creative Suite came out (I think?) and Australian said that a first class flight to Los Angeles and the American price were less than the Australian price. Hoping Bruce or Sheila [1] Cunningham [2] can chime in
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNBy1D1Y0h4 damn I was only familiar with the audio; this aged extremely poorly.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Cunningham's_L...
It's been true (maybe still is? Haven't checked) for quite awhile; people I know would always hit up the Apple Store when visiting the USA and return bearing gifts, because the price savings was quite noticeable.
~2012 was the same thing. The usd was very low compared to eur, but the apple store sold things in ~same value in eur + tax. So you could legit buy an airplane ticket (not even a low cost, regular line was ok), visit NY for a weekend and buy a macbook, come back, and end up paying the same amount.
Not just Apple. Around 2010, I bought a tripod and head from the US. Had it delivered to France, paid all import duties and taxes and VAT (I single out VAT because, since taxing is the national sport, it's levied on top of the other taxes, which are also levied on shipping a big hunk of metal). It was around 25% cheaper than buying from a local store.
Here's the kicker: the tripod and head were both produced in Italy. So it was somehow cheaper to ship them halfway around the world and pay import duties twice than to buy locally with no import duty (since it's the EU).
yeah, this applied to any pricier laptop or DSLR, though warranty could be a problem
Flying to the USA is a bit risky right now. It would be better for someone already in the USA to mail them to you, right?
Most places with heavy duties/tariffs also intercept mail and apply said duties/tariffs (and sometimes just seize everything).
He declared the import and paid the VAT.
Wow, that’s just being terrible at smuggling.
> Flying to the USA is a bit risky right now.
Please be serious.
Please read this
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton...
These stories usually have some non-trivial factor that is missing in the article. In this case there's a small visible red flag: the two tourists are British but traveling on B visas, rather than using the visa waiver program. Why? Well according the DHS they both have multi-year overstays in the US.
This doesn't justify the detention they went through. But it also means the lesson of the story is not "random tourists are being detained".
The article clearly says only Bill had overstayed, not Karen. "Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not.".
The B2 visa seems to be because the length of the trip exceeded the ESTA limit, "over two months", perhaps the original plan had been for a longer trip.
The Guardian is complete propaganda - without exaggeration every single article about this issue has been utter lies.
See this for more balance https://x.com/DHSgov/status/2025975226002018309
Yes, because a DHS statement, published on Twitter of all places, isn't going to be propaganda. I can't think of any instances of them blatantly lying even against their own video evidence in, like, at least a week. /s
When a publication only publishes the "oppresseds" point of view without ever publishing the other view then it is by definition propaganda. The Guardian has been incredibly consistent in this over years now.
That's whataboutism. Doesn't change the fact that The Guardian _is_ propaganda.
The secret ingredient is.. crime.
not really, they paid import duty
No duty, only VAT. https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/commodities/84717050...
Now I am curious, Understand that I am from the states, and consequently have zero intuition as to what a VAT is. But... the hard drive importer is directly using the HDDs and as such is not adding any value to the item, why are they paying a value added tax?
If I had to guess it is probably on the value that could have been added to the item.
It’s just the name for sales tax. Why is there a tax on sales, isn’t a sale a discount? Then is the sales tax negative because it’s the tax on the difference between the full price and the discounted price? You’d probably end up with a refund for buying the thing, unless your state has no sales tax.