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.
bing boom
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He then flew back to Thailand and send the suits.
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.
The NL dealer wanted €5k but Lithuania wanted €2800 for the same exact couch so I then convinced myself it was worth it to pay for a fabric upgrade. Since its made by the same Belgian company, the warranty is identical and valid across the EU.
I guess you could say I’ve successfully assimilated to my new adopted home in NL and now I hate to pay full price for almost anything!
They are small race-only 2-stroke motorcycles, not sold in the US at all.
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”.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax
It's likely poorly enforced, but it's on the books and it's a complicated one to track. It was more of a concern when internet sales didn't collect state sales.
There's also Simplified Sellers Use Tax lawsuit that was recently in the courts.
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
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.
2026 production from many of the big manufacturers is already completely sold.
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.
My recommendation is that if someone doesn't strictly need the hardware in the next 12 months, it's better to wait it out.
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.
It's called arbitrage.
Eventually, other people figured it out and the prices leveled out.
Arbitrage opportunities crop up all the time.
[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...
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).
Please be serious.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton...
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 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.
See this for more balance https://x.com/DHSgov/status/2025975226002018309
If I had to guess it is probably on the value that could have been added to the item.