Import collectibles and publishing
from Europe to the United States

Start with language, because it is the one advantage no local distributor can undercut. Spanish-language editions printed in Spain and Portuguese editions printed in Portugal are frequently the versions your customers actually want, and they arrive in Latin American markets late, in small allocations or never. Publishers like Norma Editorial, Planeta Cómic and Devir, and the Franco-Belgian houses behind the bande dessinée catalogue, sit at the centre of that. Add Taschen for art and photography books, whose formats and editions are a European proposition first.

The second axis is the hobby trade. Games Workshop's Warhammer ranges, Asmodee's board game catalogue, LEGO's European assortment, Panini's collections, model kits from Italeri and Revell, EU pressings on vinyl and European print runs of trading cards all carry regional exclusives and edition differences that make a specialist shop's window look different from everyone else's. Third, the backlist: European stock persists on titles and references that are out of print or unavailable in your market, which is often where the margin is for a specialist retailer. Commercial terms are between you and each publisher or distributor — trade accounts, minimum orders and territorial agreements are theirs to set. What we do is receive from all of them into one address and send you one shipment.

Start with the change that reset the arithmetic: the $800 de minimis exemption was suspended on 29 August 2025, so a shipment from Europe can attract duty from the first dollar. For a business that is not only a cost — it is a reason to change how you ship. When each consignment is a customs event, sending ten small parcels a month costs you ten sets of charges, while consolidating into one or two well-documented consignments spreads that overhead across the whole order.

The second thing to know is that the threshold conversation ends where commercial imports begin. Formal entry procedures and a customs bond come into play on commercial consignments above the informal-entry ceiling, and in practice most importers work with a licensed customs broker who files the entry, applies the HTS classification and posts the bond. That is your side of the border. Our side is making the entry easy to file: one consolidated shipment, a commercial invoice that matches what is in the box, a packing list, real weights and dimensions, and the supplier's origin documents. US tariff rates have been moving through 2026, so we deliberately do not print rate tables that would be stale next month — your broker prices the current rate against your HTS codes.

Two operational realities shape this category. The first is weight: paper is dense, and a pallet of books or a case of hardbacks costs far more to move than its volume suggests. That pushes you towards larger, less frequent consignments and towards sea freight where your replenishment cycle can absorb the transit — which is a planning decision, not something we can fix with a better rate. The second is condition. Collectibles are sold on condition, so a corner crushed in transit is a markdown or a return. We repack for protection where the original packaging is not up to an international leg, and we will photograph condition on arrival if you ask, so that a claim starts from evidence rather than memory.

There is also one tax rule genuinely worth knowing, because it changes the arithmetic more than anything on this page: in Brazil, books, newspapers and periodicals — and the paper used to print them — enjoy constitutional tax immunity. That does not automatically make every shipment free of every charge, and it does not extend to games, miniatures or toys, but for a bookshop importing printed matter into Brazil it is a materially different calculation from importing collectible figures. Confirm the treatment of your specific goods with your despachante; it is the first thing we would check in your position.