What a board costs, country by country

These numbers cannot be compared across rows. A median of 2,300 in Australian dollars and a median of 430 in US dollars are two measurements of two different markets in two different currencies, and subtracting one from the other produces a number that means nothing. We publish them side by side because the shape of each market is worth seeing — not because the comparison is available.

A currency menu lived here for one day, in September 2026. It took the measured price and multiplied it by the day's exchange rate, marking the result with a ≈. The owner removed it, and the reasoning is one sentence: a converted amount is no longer an observation — it is an observation multiplied by an assumption, on a site whose entire argument is that it measures instead of inferring.

The objection is not pedantry. A rate has a date, and the date is never the date of the price; it moves after we publish and before you read. It ignores the card fee your bank adds, the duty at the border, and the shipping that is usually the larger number anyway. Four guesses stacked under a ≈ do not become a fact, and a reader who acts on one and finds the real total 18% higher has been misled by a site that promised measurement.

What replaced it answers the question the reader was actually asking. Nobody wants to know what these Australian dollars are in euros; they want to know what can I buy, from where I am. So you pick your country in the top bar, and every list narrows to products that shops there carry, at the prices we read there, in their own currency. No arithmetic, and no rate to defend.

• It is where the shop ships from, not where it ships to. We read a shop's own catalogue; it tells us where the business is. It does not tell us whether it will post to you, and we refuse to guess — so we say the one thing we know.
• 1 of these countries have exactly one shop. On a corpus this size that is usually a classification error rather than a national market, and we mark those rows rather than quietly averaging them into the table. Sixteen such rows were corrected by hand on 10 September 2026 after exactly this check.
• The median is computed only on products two or more independent shops carry. A median built from items a single shop lists would describe that shop's catalogue and call it a country.
• Currency is the hardest fact we hold and country is among the softest. A shop's currency is stated on every page it publishes; its country is inferred from what the business declares about itself. Where the two disagree, believe the currency.

Why not just convert everything to US dollars?

Because a converted amount stops being an observation and becomes an observation multiplied by an assumption. A rate has a date that is never the date of the price, and it ignores the card fee, the duty and the shipping — which is usually the larger number anyway. Four guesses under a tilde do not add up to a fact.

Can I compare the medians in this table against each other?

No. A median of 2,300 Australian dollars and a median of 430 US dollars are two measurements of two different markets in two different currencies. They sit side by side so the shape of each market is visible, not because the comparison is available.

Why is one country so much more expensive than another?

Usually because its shops carry a different part of the catalogue, not because of the exchange rate. Australian shops in this corpus stock markedly more of the premium end, which moves the median far more than any currency effect would.

Does country mean where it ships to?

No — where the shop ships from. We read a shop's own catalogue, which tells us where the business is; it does not tell us whether it will post to you, and we refuse to guess. If you want prices you can act on, choose your country in the top bar and lists narrow to shops there.

Why are some countries marked as having a single shop?

Because on a corpus this size, a country with exactly one shop is usually a classification error rather than a national market. We mark those rows instead of quietly averaging them in. Sixteen were corrected by hand on 10 September 2026 after exactly this check.