You're in the US, right? Diamond Previews (which distributes to all comic shops) had a few SH figures back in the day, mostly Ryuki stuff, but they actually sold for less than the equivalent Japanese prices (comic shops of course were free to mark up as necessary). They actually came out with a bunch of stuff, including SOCs and such, but I don't think they were consistently ordered and were thus subject to delays and severe reallocations. This was also back when you could walk into any US toystore and see a bunch of MSIAs...
Now Bluefin distributes Bandai stuff, including SH Figuarts, here in the US... not sure what their retail prices are, but I know that that's who BBTS usually gets their stuff from (the last One Piece Figuarts Zero I ordered from them had the Bluefin sticker and an extra Funimation sticker, since Funimation holds the anime license here). I'm assuming local toy stores could order directly from them if they wanted to... anyone know stores that do?
As an aside, you want to know something crazy? The exchange rate is so bad right now that BBTS prices are sometimes less than the Yen price...
