Buying gear from overseas?

I've been looking at samplers and stuff; and it seems even with postage from America to here in Australia it's often measurably cheaper on the second-hand market to buy internationally; to say nothing for the larger choice in gear. But I'm not the most experienced in purchasing this way out of the Ebay circuit, and it seems like if I got ripped off this way there'd be less recourse; something I don't want with the investments I'd be putting in.

So what have people done in purchasing this way, and what things are to be avoided/big warning signs?

Actually after a bit of contemplation I think the question I was more asking is that is it worth taking this risk of it being a dud to get a fair discount?

i've done us/ebay to nz a couple of times. one thing to watch out for is (here at least) they hold the package till you pay GST on it if its over a certain (declared) value.

in terms of the risk of getting a broken item - the only thing you can do is order easily fixable items (ie not to many custom ICs) i guess, or just take the risk

I've ordered stuff from Germany & the UK to Canada with no problems/fast shipping. Just had to buy a plug socket converter thing.

in my experience, shipping and customs is actually a bigger headache than making sure the machine doesn't break. i sold a synth to some guy in the netherlands. the delivery got held at the office, he wanted some number to know where to pick it up, i had no clue. wound up scanning the packing slip, which actually had the number (d'oh). so it worked out alright, but there was a bit of panic and confusion regarding whether he'd actually be able to locate it.

i'd think a groovebox would hold up in the mail better than a duct-taped memorymoog. i wouldn't buy anything incredibly fragile/rare!

you can spot the problem auctions, to a certain degree. if the auction text looks like it was written by a total mong, it can be presumed their ability to pack things up will be just as bad... like the guy i bought my alpha juno one from. that wasn't international, but he took WEEKS to ship it, and was a cunt to me when i asked him where my keyboard was?

this is getting off topic. conclusion: caveat emptor, common sense, etc.

I first misread the topic as "buying gear from oversteps" lol