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I'm sure SparkFun or some other American based company will import in bulk so you can get it cheaper from them.

Ture. I'll probably wait a few months and buy it from Amazon...

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1076 $50 US plus shipping.

Take that up with UPS. I ran their shipping calculator for Rome to Dallas and got rates well in excess of that[1], so either they are eating part of the shipping or they have a preferred rate.

[1] Cheapest I saw was $109 (83 euros)

I think the problem is that they specified UPS express, which is one of their high speed delivery options (overniight within US, 2-3 days global point-to-point). I'd be perfectly OK with waiting a week for shipping by postal mail, but the Arduino folk don't offer a low-cost option.

Actually, what I quoted is for the cheapest service UPS offers between Italy and the US and is only about $15 less than their express service.

8-.