It seems ages the thread on this started, but it only was yesterday. In the meantime, there were about a dozen "daily" digests worth of rant on eBay (ok, ok, I suppose it´s interesting for some of you; I still am of the opinion one can perfectly well do without electric auctions and that they are actually detrimental to our pastime in the long run).
So if list members are allowed to go on endlessly about the intricacies of something that obviously is meant to be bottomless, I should be allowed to give one important hint on how to avoid cost & trouble when shipping smaller items from Germany (possibly all of Europe) to the US.
If you have small sized parts that weigh up to two kilos, You could ask the seller to ship them "letter surface mail". Funnily enough, a letter can be 900 mm length plus width plus height, that is quite sizeable and not exactly what I personally would call a letter, but there you go.
The advantages are that letters do not need the green customs declaration, and that all letters, never mind if declared surface or air, are now airfreighted across the Atlantic. So it´s nearly as quick as airfreight, but, depending on weight, up to half the cost of air mail, and a fraction of what a parcel or even a small packet would be. I have sent a number of these "letters" to the US, and so far it´s always worked a treat.
Regards,
Toni Theilmeier, Belm, Germany.