Public Service Announcement (for Australia/New Zealend readers): GMT P500 direct shipping

  

The most recent P500 delivery received directly from China included Hubris
(unboxing post forthcoming) and Combat Commander: Minor Nations
(which was probably unnecessary., but looks cool.  

I'm just going to come out and say it. Many of my favourite wargame publishers are US-based, and shipping to Australia (and New Zealand, and South Asia/Oceania generally), has hiked over the last six or so years. The rise began before the Pandemic, with the Extraordinary Congress of the Universal Postal Union in 2019, where decisions were made to . That's when USPS postage to Australia for a four-pound game from Noble Knight jumped from around US24.00* to around US$35.00 (it's now upwards of US$50.00). I'm not going to get into the tall grass about that - you can get the gist of it here.**

Tariff uncertainty hasn't helped. From the Australia point of view, neither has the parlous state of the AUD, which, as time of writing has crept up to a lofty US66c. This isn't a uniquely Australian problem, but it's my problem. Every extra dollar spent on postage is a dollar not going to a publisher for their fine wares.

If you read my last post about my wargame collection breakdown, you may remember GMT games made up the single biggest slice of that collection. Part of the reason is they've always been fair and reasonable with international shipping (sometimes more so than was good for them). With the double whammy of higher shipping charges and higher overseas production costs. I thought I'd have to start getting very selective about which P500 orders I was going to keep and which I was going to drop (I'm not going to say here how many titles I have on pre-order, but I'm grateful the production queue stretches out for several years). Around the middle of the year, Gene Billingsley mentioned in GMT's house newsletter that shipping prices would be going up for everyone (and a month or two later, that games delivered from the warehouse would attract a tariff stipend), but in the same breath, he talked about the work they'd been doing to get games ordered from non-US markets shipped directly from the country of manufacture (i.e., China), which meant they would not attract any tariff penalties..

Fast forward to now. I've had a couple of Australia Direct deliveries, now (with Italy '43 (GMT Games, 2025) and a couple of other titles on their way), so I feel like I can make a progress report. As I understand it, the direct shipping is firmly established for Australia/New Zealand and Japan. Products are sent by ship to the distributors, then last leg shipping is by that country's national mail provider. For Australia this is VR Distribution (a division of Asmodee Australia); VR covers New Zealand distribution as well. The shipping prices (available on the GMT website here; scroll down for the International Shipping Table), aren't super-cheap, but they ae significantly better than shipping from the warehouse, They area little more expensive for NZ shipments (about US$5.00 per shipment).

It's early days, but I can report that - for this punter at least - shipments seem to be taking about eight weeks, give or take a few working days, from GMT's shipping notification email to the parcel arriving at my door. I'm in the catbird seat because VR Distribution is based in Adelaide, about three kilometres from where I live, so that's going to shave an extra couple of days transit-time. I'd guess another week or so for our cousins across the ditch. 

To be fair, three deliveries are probably not a significant sample size for any kind of serious consideration, but it does bode well. With Christmas complications, I don't expect to see Italy '43 and it's companions before the middle of January, but hope springs eternal. And it isn't like I'm scratching for a game to learn.

* These aren't hard numbers, but looking over old receipts, they're pretty close.

** And while you're there, donate a couple of bucks to the Wikipedia Foundation. It's an extraordinary tool (celebrating its 25th birthday) and an exemplar of how the Internet can work for a common good.