8th Edition rants: Part 2 - Paying the AU tax

I spent last week in London and realised partway through my stay that the hotel was about 200m from the Tottenham Court Road Warhammer store. Since I was ~12,000km away from my regular store, I thought I'd sneak in to see what the pre-order copies of 8th edition looked like. 

Given they had only had it for ~2 days, the box minis were assembled but not yet painted. The rulebooks had already been pretty heavily flicked through though and this was what I was more keen on - not entirely sold on the primaris marines to add to my 5th Co.  

As usual for their stores, the guys were helpful and keen to get people into ordering some copies of the new gear - I said that pre-ordering from them wasn't that helpful since I'd be back in Sydney before the release date. They said - not a problem, you can order here and have it sent anywhere in the world. As long as you buy 100+ pounds worth of stuff...  

What I was really after was the new rulebook, and since that was only going to get me to 35 pounds, I went back to the hotel to think about it. The price for the rulebook on the AU site is $98 (AUD) and since the exchange rate is (just on) 2x AUD = 1x pounds... hey... shouldn't the rulebook be about $70 AUD? So there is a $28 premium (on top of the exchange rate) when buying the rulebook in Oz. 

This got me looking at the other options and how much more the AU group have to pay - 

- Boxed Dark Millennium = $220 (AU site for AU orders) vs ~$190 (AUD) if buying in the UK

- Individual (single) Index book = $40 (AU) vs ~$30 bought in the UK

- Blood Angels (or any) Starter set + index = $180 (AU) vs $130 bought in the UK

Net result - I ended up back in the Tottenham Court Road store the day after loading up an international order... rather than pay $98 for the AU rulebook, I've ended up buying the 95 pound boxed game and (since the box is less than the 100 pound minimum int mail order - coincidence?) adding an Index book as well. In my head, I've saved $40-50 by ordering in pounds rather than AUD... but then on the other hand I've spent twice as much as I would have by just buying a copy of the rulebook in an AU store a few weeks later. 

Ah well - 40k has never really been a hobby to get into in order to save money. 

I'll take a little solace in adding ~60 more unpainted minis to my list of unfinished projects. 

EDIT: had the credit card transaction show up and the billed amount is $192 AUD for 110 pounds worth of stuff (ie, exchange rate on the day was more like 1.75x than 2x). That actually makes it worse... buying in Oz would have cost me $260, so I've saved just under $70 by ordering while overseas.