Well, now that I'm friends with the Hot Toys retailer here, everything is hunky dory. I pretty much pay the price that you guys in the US pay for HT, Cinemaquette and Sideshow items.
But before I met him (this was like a year ago), I went to his shop and saw the Tumbler. It was going for 1,500 USD. No kidding. And it was selling like hot cakes. The thing is, there's a lot of rich kids here and they don't bother researching and ordering from the net (and also, the customs here is horrible. They randomly stop things from coming in, for bizarre reasons).
So I bought mine from BBTS. I got it for 450 USD. But shipping went up to around 300 USD.
I later told the retailer this story and he said, if he'd known me before, he'd have given it to me at US retail price.
All cool in the end.