Quoted from too-many-pins:How does the border thing work? If someone were to bring machines from the US to Canada for the show wouldn't they have to pay at customs to bring them into Canada? Seems like it would be a real PITA to bring a dozen machines into Canada hoping to sell them then to turn around and bring some or most of them home.
Just curious!
It would be great if you could bring them to the show and only have to pay customs if you didn't bring them home but I know something like that would never work.
Paying to take machines to a show sounds fairly expensive?
You need to declare them at the border. It's fairly simple to do. My Dad is 67 years old and drives down to Florida every winter with a camper full of stuff and never pays a cent on the way there or on the way back.
Essentially, you just declare it's value and record some pertinent information like serial number, description, model, value, and country of origin. On the way back, if you sold the pin, you would need to declare that you are bringing some much $$$ back into the US. If it didn't sell then you just declare that you're bringing the same pin back. There are a few tricks like just describing the item as a "pinball machine" and then trading pins and bringing back a "pinball machine" as well. Not that I know anything about this...
I'm sure someone else has more experience on this than I do.