I'm trying to work out if it's cheaper to ship 3x guitars from the USA, or, to fly there and bring them back with me.
The guitars can be shipped anywhere in the USA for free. I'm about to email the store and ask what shipping would be.
But I'd be flying over, grabbing the pre-delivered guitars (not sure where to yet - would an airport hold them for me!?) - then hop straight onto another flight back to Australia with the guitars.
So I guess I need to know… where can I find the most dirt-cheap return Australia/USA flight? Don't even care when - just the cheapest!
Probably cheaper to ship, but way less adventure! If you insist on picking them up and they ship anywhere in the US, you could ask them to ship to a post office in Hawaii. I'm not sure about USA, but in AUS you can send a parcel "care of" a post office without a PO Box and they'll receive and hold it for you for about a week.
Jetstar and Qantas have ~$1000 return fares from Bris or Syd advertised lately. It might be hard to get the dates you want and at the very least you should probably overnight there to give yourself enough time to go and get the guitars before going back and in case of flight delays. There will be high excess baggage fees as well, particularly for Jetstar.