With winter around the corner, i want to buy myself a snowboard or set of skis, If there is a website you could recommend that sells them cheap, even if they are from overseas with america and europe about to go out of season. any help would be much appreciated
Snowboard/skis
Lcocojohnoe on 04/06/2015 - 16:55
Comments
Ohh yeah, from a real savings point of view you can try your luck on backcountry.com's outlet site
steepandcheap.comor if you want to use a freight forwarder, you can often pick up some lightly used heavily reduced ski gear from geartrade.com. Backcountry will sell their returned products on that site, descriptions are usually spot on. But they only ship in the USA.
or Sierratradingpost.com for closeouts.
www.the-house.com is pretty good but not nearly as much now with the dollar. Plus there is selected brands that aren't licensed to ship here. Worth a look either way though
I wouldn't buy before Woking out wether I wanted skis or snowboard. Hiring is pretty cost effective unless you are going to live at the snow or visit every weekend. Gives you a good chance to try different styles before committing too.
Backcountry shipping costs make them non-competitive. Sierra can be OK if you are buying something expensive and manage to get it on one of their regular 40% off codes. Shipping from Sierra these days is also crazy. I have bought a couple of Snowboards, Snowboard boots and Ski boots from levelninesports.com I managed to get my last board when they had a free shipping to oz promotion! Their postage is normally pretty reasonable and very fast. They dont have the range of Backcountry, so if you are out to impress your shred buddies with some kind of uber exclusive board you might be out of luck. Levenine have loads of last years models etc on massive discounts. Do your homework and you can maybe get something where the only change for 2015 is a different topsheet graphics! In all honesty, the way this season looks like it is shaping up you might be better off with a skateboard!
Steepandcheap is good if you get a bargain but the shipping costs are crazy. Shipping from a mail forwarder like shipito for a snowboard or skis is also crazy! If you are a beginner the advice to hire is good. The most important thing to get right before you buy skis or a board is boots. The best skis in the world wont help if your feet feel like they are being cut in 2 by bad bad fitting boots! You would be better to get a good set of boots 1st and hire skis/boards. If you are going to go regularly though, avoiding the hire shop madness is highly recommended. Levelnine will have a set of skis or a board for probably $250 ish and they can fit bindings before they ship.
Post up what kind of skier you are (experience/ability/type of skiing e.g groomed runs or freestyle/park) and how many days you will ski. Are you going overseas where they have real snow? If so maybe you will need something that handles waist deep pow instead of just the icy man made stuff we'll all be fighting over here in oz this year!
froogle.com will be useful for this.
If you're buying from overseas, the killer is shipping cost due to size and a lot of ski/board brands also enforce exclusions on shipping to Australia.
For browsing, the best ski stores are:
backcountry.com (by far the best)
but also look at:
evo.com
torpedo7.com.au
levelninesports.com
And if you do a google us/uk shopping search for the product you want you may find it cheaper at some other store.