I understand that a portion of the cost is because of exchange rate and I don’t mind paying $15-$30 shipping if it’s on a bulk lot of cards or if it is an expensive card. $20 onwards. It’s when its a $2 Card and it becomes $22 with shipping.
If it’s a two dollar card but 22.00 delivered which is more than it’s worth to you then pass on it. Simply figure what your willing to pay total then bid accordingly.
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If there is a relatively inexpensive card that I want (100 or less), that comes with a huge shipping amount I ask a trusted friend in the US to purchase it for me and send it through to me with the cheaper postage. I know you can’t just trust anybody but if you have friends you trust it can save you a lot of money.
But otherwise what @garyis2000 said is what you should do.
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You can ask the seller if they are willing to do it via a cheaper method, but be willing to do the following;
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Be laughed at; or
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Have no buyer protection as they’ll likely request a F&F payment.
paid heavy international costs for many years in Aus. You should message a seller directly and nicely, and just state if they can send via a standard international USPS priority mail. Or via a small envelope. They might do it cheaper, but if it’s ebay, you are likely to be dealing with some people who have no clue about international post. So it’s difficult to reason with sellers.
Just have to take in on the chin sometimes.
Offer to “gift” pay the seller so if it gets lost YOU lose, not the seller.
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The actual postage costs were discussed here.
I typically don’t list items under $10 as I have to pay $11-14 for international postage. That is the lowest package option with tracking. $20 sounds like they are using registered mail.
Does this work out for the seller?
I recently started selling internationally on eBay from The Netherlands and had to cut out Australia because our postal service doesn’t seem to offer tracking to Australia 
I’m all for selling to any country, but I’m simply not going to take the risk if tracking is not available.
Unless I can find a good deal on the price of the card with shipping I usually stick to large sellers and buy in bulk to minimise the cost of shipping. Although I find most sellers list shipping to Australia at $20-30 USD which is a little rich for me.
On the flip side buying cards from Australian sellers usually results in some great deals as the market isn’t as strong here and the costs of shipping abroad isn’t as attractive for people living in America.
I order from Troll&Toad most of the time, which offers varied shipping methods for all orders, which is a relief tbh. I can handle $5 shipping.
On Ebay, I usually message the seller but sometimes I just don’t get a reply at all, which is rather annoying. But yeah. v_v; You deal.
I was going to buy stuff from Troll and Toad last year when I was first researching getting back into collecting and I had a fried say they were terrible. Are they reliable?
I’ve had absolutely no trouble with Troll and Toad. All of my cards have arrived safely and without a hitch, always packed in a sleeve, toploader and either a bubble mailer or a hard envelope.
That’s my experience and I’ve been ordering from them for a few years now. So I guess your friend just had a bad experience?
(My advice, though, is that if you’re looking for PSA grade cards, it’d be better to try one of the dudes on this forum or someone you can actually ask questions and photos for, such as ebay sellers, since Troll and Toad is more bulk orders and whatnot so, the card quality as far as centering and whatnot might not be on par with PSA quality. That’s about all you have to watch for. 
Furthermore, you might be able to contact them about that, but I wouldn’t know since I don’t grade my cards. )
Troll and Toad is definitely reliable. However if condition is a factor for you, they are not the most accurate. They are high volume and don’t take unique photos for their cards.
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I have ordered once or twice from Troll and Toad. I received order(s) quickly. Majority of cards were scratched. I think they are fine for players, but poor for collectors.
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That’s a really good way of putting it! Their different condition terms (NM & Played) definitely are geared towards players.
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That’s odd - none of mine have. 
All of them have been in near-mint/mint condition.
I’m currently doing a binder collection. I don’t really mind condition at the moment. I have a PSA collection I’m working on but I prefer buying the cards already graded anyway.
I have ordered from troll and toad multiple times. As they sell cards as near mint or played quality I have never received a card outside the grade I purchased. I have had issues with missing cards from large orders and the customer support had send the missing cards without question. For non graded collections I highly recommend.
I have graded I think two cards from PSA that came back as PSA 10s lol but yeah usually hit and miss
I only buy from people with cheap shipping. eBay and TCGplayer is probably the best bet for Australian collectors.
In Australia, we exclusively value things based on TrollandToad’s prices but I’ve found that TrollandToad to be one of the worst vendors I’ve had to deal with so I don’t buy from them.
It takes 5-8 weeks to receive anything from them because their weird shipping sends everything through Europe and almost everything I’ve bought from them has been LP instead of NM. This is just bizarre when the average time to receive something from most stores is 2-4 weeks.