While I can't judge how good your plan is, FWIW I've often regretted saying 'maybe' when later I realized it would've worked, or at least been worth trying. But then it was no longer a good idea...

Third world countries usually have very heavy import and sales taxes as the corrupt elites prefer to tax consumption than income, wealth or inheritance. In Brazil, for example, all tech costs for the consumer in dollars at least twice what it costs for the American consumer due to 60% import tax plus some variable 18 to 30% sales tax (similar but not the same as a VAT). Factor in freight and the fact those items are in practice luxury goods with the importer expecting high margins and the scenario is complete for absurd price increases

How much does an RTX 3080 Ti 12GB cost in your country?

Not the OP, but in India, the lowest priced one I could find was from ASUS, which costs around $2600. I don't think the vanilla RTX 3080Ti is available here yet. The most expensive one was from MSI which costs around $3200. Whereas PS5 (official price i.e. without considering the shortages) costs $675.

What currency is that in?

I converted the Indian Rupee to USD while writing that comment. So the prices mentioned in my comment are in USD.

I suppose OP is specifying USD. Currency in India would be INR for India.

Apologies for the late response. I was joking actually, we really do have a major surplus of hardware, but the prices we pay are insane, and have always been so. I built my PC back in 2015 and paid about two times more what I would have paid if I lived in the US.

I ordered a lot of stuff from the US throughout the years. It takes at least a month to get here, and shipping costs from $50 (for the smallest items like Kindles), to $150-200.

So it's not really practical.

Looking at retail:

— the cheapest 3080 Ti 12GB I see is around $2500, the most expensive one is $3200 (there are 10 models in total).

— PS5: from $1000 to $1350

— 3080: from $2000 and up.

If you have the right connections you can get them individually with bulk prices, but it's not easy to do because of pervasive corruption.

You missed the boat on the PS5, unfortunately. They're selling for A$750 on the secondary market now - same as what they cost in regular stores.

(Unless Australia also has an oversupply...)

That’s a clever business idea. Governments will usually demand you register a company in order to be able to legally export them.

>Governments will usually demand you register a company in order to be able to legally export them.

Nah. As long as you don't sell many, you can get away with just marking as gift and putting a value of 20 USD on the package.

... and when it gets lost you are unable to claim the insurance amount

Honestly, I wouldn't be concerned about that. Insurance is nothing more than free revenue for the carrier.

I'd send close to 500 packages a month to destinations all over the world, and tracked items almost never go missing.

For those that do go missing, it's always to a few hotspots that I would simply avoid if selling an item this valuable (pretty much just Brazil and South Africa now; Russia and Italy are much better than they used to be).

Send to China (Beijing)? Many of my packages have gone lost or got opened and stuff taken out. And yes, the value on the CN23 form is conclusive for the insurance amount you can claim on the CN24 form.

Require signing for packages and its a solved issue.

I'm sure customs officers around the world have never seen this trick before...

Oh, I'm sure they see it every single day, but nobody cares. They're actually less likely to hassle you if you write a low value on the package - can literally shave a week+ off of delivery times.

Just fyi, doing so is actually tax fraud and very much illegal. Yes the chances of getting caught are incredibly small, but if you're doing this commercially then if caught not only you will have to pay ALL of the fees back + penalty, do it for long enough and there will be criminal charges involved.

So yes , "nobody cares" as long as you don't get caught.

Well... in my case low value on my package added a week to my delivery precisely because after seeing this trick once too many the customs are now checking everything. I had to mail the sender (big US based company) to send me the correct invoice after the customs sent me the one they received.

I think you generalize too much... do you know how every customs office work?

Aaaaand this is why now even "$20 gifts" have to pay import taxes at the EU entry customs.

What do you mean ? Here in Hong Kong (hardly the west), an RTX 3080 is around 1000 USD, how much is it where you are ?

New RTX 3080 sell on US eBay for US$1500-1600. RTX 3080 Ti for $2000. <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index>

How much does a PS5 or 3080 go for in your neck of the globe?

Oops, sorry. See here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29148838

Well, I'd be a customer.