First off, the TM doesn't ship with ANY wooden parts. It's just a very convincing looking plastic.
Most pricing overseas puts the cost of a new TM M1A1 at about $250 or so ($246 on average). Now what they don't tell you is there's a $75 shipping fee, which puches the cost up to $325. Now that's for the gun and factory accessories (loading tool, standard mag, manuals, etc.) only, no BBs, no battery, no charger.
Olympus airsoft
www.olympus-airsoft.com here in the US has a shipped price of about $310 shipped. Other stuff is ala carte, but I've always had good dealings with them.
Cheapest eBay price I've seen is about $320 or so.
Now if you have several close friends that live near you, your best bet is to order a bunch of guns, accessories, etc at the same time. This REALLY does cut down on the shipping charges quite a bit. The proplem with doing this is if your friends DON'T live close to you, then you have to ship their gear to them. Which will cost you up to $25 to ship a basic Thompson via Priority mail.
As far as overseas dealers go...
When I was a retailer I dealt with WGC, Airsoft Shop, DEN and a couple others.
Eddie at Airsoft Shop
www.airsoftshop.com/index2.htmALWAYS answered my e-mails within a day or so. His English is better than most, and if you catch him online, he'll usually respond to your e-mail in minutes. Keep in mind there's an 11 hour time difference between Minnesota and HK.
WarGameClub
www6.wargameclub.com/WGC_Shop/ can take up to a week to answer e-mails, and their answers are at times the best of the worst Japinglish (or would that be Chinenglish?) I've seen. Usually single sentence answers that often do NOT answer any question you may have had. Having said that, they do ship reasonably fast and usually do not take orders for items they're out of stock on.
DEN Trinity
www.dentrinityshop.com/index_ie.jsp... What can I say about DEN. Honestly, since I had an issue with them a couple years ago I haven't used them except in an emergency, and when I did the parts I ordered arrived very fast, but the shipping charges were INSANE. But, desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.
Red Wolf...
www.redwolfairsoft.com/redwolf/airsoft/Home Another hard company to get a good reply to an e-mail from (or at all). Unless they've changed their policies I'd avoid using them. A couple years ago there were a LOT of questionable practices going on there. Paid for gun upgrades not being installed, or being installed poorly. Missing items in orders, non shipment of orders... the list goes on. On the other hand, there are a few people that have had perfect transactions with them. I suggest checking around, asking questions and making your best guess.
Given the chance at saving money overseas, or buying in the USA... I'd buy from Olympus. The main reason is customer support. If the gun arrives from HK and it's broken... what do you do? Pay another $75 to ship it back to them to fix? I don't think so. Buying from a company in the USA (if you're based there. In the UK, buy from companies IN the UK.) is safer in the long run in my opinion.
Of course, if you happen to have a private jet and can visit the airsoft shops in HK on a weekly basis, heck, buy from there because the store front prices are even less than the web site prices.
Rook
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Rook's Castle, I dare you! What's a matter McFly? Chicken?
Edited by: [url=http://pub217.ezboard.com/bthealienslegacy.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rook3>Rook 3[/url] at: 2/25/04 2:54 pm