Back in the 90s and early 2000s, lots of games that were released in Germany never came out here and there weren't really any game stores that shipped internationally. We used to collect, over Usenet, a regional order for Adam Spielt, the biggest German source for games that would shop to the US. I'd collect the money to get to the minimum order (400 USD, I think) and cheaper shipping and, when the packages came in from Germany, I would repackage them and send them out to the other buyers. It was a long, expensive, and often frustrating process, but getting those games from Germany that we had been drooling over and would likely never be released in the US was worth it. I still think of those days as the glory days of this hobby of mine. Still, I just got the following games in from Germany through Amazon.de. It was 40 buck order with around 7 dollar shipping and it arrived in less than ten days. Though I sometimes miss being part of a tiny enthusiast community, it is hard to argue with the idea that this is the best time ever to be a board game collector.
