Ole-Are you asking only about Japanese pressings or pressings made in various parts of the world? And I’m assuming you are talking about older pressings, right? Or new releases as well?
I buy records from all over the world, I’ve gotten UK pressings from the Mid-East, German pressings in the States, and even the odd New Zealand copy of one old, rare Vertigo.
Assuming you know what pressing you are after, you’ve got to work the Net. I’m not just talking about the usual places, like E-Bay, Discogs (through which I’ve gotten more than a few nice records), but, depending on genre, searches that will reveal record shops that may have the odd, the obscure or the highly desirable. Some of these dealers are not necessarily listed on the aggregation platforms. And if you develop a relationship with them through a positive purchase or two, you can often get them to help you track down other things you are after- that alone saves some on the shipping cost.
If it is a valuable record, I’ll pay the tariff for the shipping- in fact, I’ll usually insist on the more expedited, "signed-for" shipping to minimize the amount of time the record is in transit. The UK, France and the Netherlands tend to be more expensive for shipping than Germany, at least in the past 6-12 months. If the UK pound is still down (I haven’t checked in the last couple days), what you pay for in shipping may be offset by the lower price of the record, given the exchange rate.
The problem with high shipping costs, for me, is usually the less collectible, relatively inexpensive stuff that I want from places like the UK. Then, the shipping can exceed the price of the record!
