For the past few years I've placed group orders to German webstores shortly after Essen, as we hear the buzz about new titles (and take advantage of some bargains). Adam Spielt is the gold standard for ordering overseas, though we've also ordered from Magnus Spiele, AllGames4You, and Playme.de This particular year we went with Playme.de, mostly because they had Oltremare in stock and a good price for Reef Encounter. I ordered both of those, plus Geschenkt and Im Auftrag des Konigs (the Adlung game). As usual, I opened this order up to the rest of the Santa Clarita Boardgamers, as well as two other local game groups. Getting the order size up helps to amortize the overseas shipping expenses.
Jonathan Degann and I have been placing orders like these since '98. We've said we should write up a little "how-to" article, uploading it to The Games Journal or Boardgamegeek. Would this be useful, I wonder? Now with the Euro-Dollar exchange rate being so lousy, these orders from Europe are less financially compelling. But they're still worth doing. Many of the games we're ordering aren't even listed at Funagain, Gamefest, Fairplay, or Boulder. Others are several bucks cheaper ordered this way, and a few are amazing bargains.
I think a "how to" article would be very useful as it's a question that seems to arise quite often for people new to the hobby. Having a detailed account of what to do/expect would be quite helpful.
Posted by: Greg Aleknevicus at November 12, 2004 03:03 PM