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I have tried twice to ship a horn to Australia. In both instances, the cost was significantly above $1500 (including customs, packaging and shipping costs). I tried using freight. But unless you are a corporation, they won't talk to you. Ocean shipping is not available either. So that leaves UPS or Fed X as the only known options (that I am aware of). I shipped a horn to Canada once. That doubled in price, as soon as it crossed the boarder. Some have suggested finding a person flying to the location and having them take the horn as baggage. How do you find people to do that? My question is, has anyone had better luck or have a better option for shipping tubas to a location outside the US?

Send a message to Cameron Gates. IIRC, he shipped a Nirschl 6/4 from Oregon to Australia within the last few years. He may have even posted about it here, too, so maybe search a bit as well.

Good luck. I think it will always be expensive, and for an around the world delivery, I think it really, really has to be worth it for the buyer. That said, everything imported in Australia comes by water or by air, so the shipping and import costs must at least be sort of expected. At least $1,000 sounds like what I would expect to get a huge fragile thing to the other side of the Earth.