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Comments
1) Taxes are definitely a factor. The US price is listed exclusive of taxes. Add anywhere from 5-10% onto the US price for state and local sales taxes to see what we really pay here. In my area it's 7.5%.
2) Under normal, non-COVID situations, most sets sold in the US are made in factory in Mexico rather than in Europe. Most of the sets sold in the UK aren't probably made in Denmark either. Lego has several factories across Europe. There are also factories in China which produce for Asia and Australia. Of course, the distribution chain is not rigid, so sometimes sets made in China will be sold in Europe or North America and vice versa.
3) Pricing will never match conversion rates exactly because those change constantly, and there are more factors involved than just currency. Labor and other fixed costs can vary quite a lot from one factory to the next, and that can affect the price Lego needs to set for different markets.
So in this case, the UK price is £320/1.2 = £267 so the price fairly similar to the US one here. There are far worse UK comparative prices on some sets, and similarly far worse US prices on some sets. Same idea with EU pricing.
I always forget that in the US a lot of the time even in shops they don't add the tax until you are at the till, even for small things like a can or a bag of crisps!
7.5% tax would be nice though!
I really wish it weren't done that way, and that they showed the all-in price, but there are some problems to that because of the variation in taxes from one city to the next. Amazon would have a hard time explaining to people why the price was lower when you weren't logged in and they didn't know where you lived vs. when you were logged in. Or why it's cheaper if I ship it to my house vs. as a gift to someone else.
Tax differences are an obvious factor in a few cases, but they don't explain why some sets are priced pound for dollar, while others are significantly cheaper in the US vs. the UK and others are substantially more expensive in the US.
In fact, it turns out that I published a blog post almost exactly 10 years ago to the day complaining about precisely this observation, so this isn't new:
http://gimmelego.blogspot.com/2010/09/fantasy-exchange-rates.html
In summary, there didn't appear to be any obvious rhyme or reason for the pricing variability back in 2010, and I'm not sure there is now either, other than what LEGO believes the local markets will bear.
Take City Racing Cars #60256 for example. List price is $29.99 US and 17.99 UK.
Just about the entire Unikitty range was a higher number in GBP than USD. This one, for example, ...
$20 but £30!
For most of its retail life I am sure it was marked up at 50% off, and still didn't sell.
With the various Argos and others doing 3 for 2, my buy it point for most retail sets is probably about 30% off. I imagine some prices are set purposely high to account for that type of consumer behaviour.