Payment made, a few friendly emails backwards and forwards with the vendor, and the unit turns out to be located in Austin, TEXAS – so way down south in the US!

Undeterred, I start with website uShip to see if I can get any reasonable quotes back for shipping it to the UK and after 5 days the only quotes are coming in for over $1,250.00 (gulp!) – so let’s revert to Plan B and think differently!!

So I track down another vendor on eBay who is selling restored arcade machines (TNT Amusements Inc – a great guy who had a Defender cocktail for sale) and explain my situation and cheekily ask him who he uses for his own sales as he ships his units globally.

Very kindly he replies, wishing me luck and recommending Lynden International who appear to be experts for shipping freight around the world and a brief enquiry with their website puts me in touch with Agustin Berastain, their expert on shipping units globally and we get a much much more resposonable price (phew!).

For reference, the cost includes:

– Ocean Freight (about 50%)

– Handling (20%)

– Pick Up from Vendor (25%)

and auxiliaries including Courier / Messenger Fee, AES, Rate Filing (FMC), B/L P/C and ENS FEE

So we are off – and after payments backwards and forwards ($ to the US) and a lot of documentation (luckily the eBay bill of sale qualifies as receipt of purchase) the machine is at the Port in Texas ready to be shipped to the UK 🙂