Hi all,

I know a lot of you are keen to get your hands on the encore Fortress Maximus (I know I am!) and I was curious to know how everyone was getting it shipped and how much it costs.

I have ordered mince from eToysJapan as I have had good experience with them in the past. I received the following email from them yesterday:

"We are trying to find a good way to ship your Encore 23, but because of size limitation of Australia postal service in parcel (both air and surface), the only option is by EMS SpeedPost which would be around $123.00 (Encore 23 + MP-15,16). However, if we can ship only the Encore 23 and pack it with in the size limitation, then the air parcel would be around $86.00, and by sea would be around $45.00 (take 2 months).

Allow us to elaberate. The size limitation is:

Length 1.05m, length and girth combined 2m (s)

Encore 23 on its own is 595 x 402 x 228mm, (s) is 1.855m. It is o.k .to wrap the item with brown paper and ship, but then the box will be destroyed for sure.

The alternative plan here is to add 1cm of material each side for protection and ship. Then (s) would be 1.961m, and still o.k. to use parcel service. Now after saying all these, we do not know what material to use (except styro foam) that can achieve this and the protection might not be very good. Shipping MP-15,16 separately would be $13.90 by 1st class airmail."

To be honest, I can wait 2 months for sea post to receive this item while I make space in the collection for it (Still not sure where to put it as it's just so huge).

I thought i'd hear what everyone else thinks about this and how you have gone about shipping issues with this monster of an item.

Thanks in advance