This is a great question and one which ebay itself has not answered sufficiently to reflect the Canada-US free trade agreement.
You need to contact Canada customs, and have them give you a list of what items go across the Canada-US border, duty-free.
Musical instruments are duty free between Canada and U.S.; I've gotten this from many sources. If you are purchasing a duty-free item that is to go over the border, you need to consider a few things:
1. If the seller ships via USPS, as they are a government sponsored mail organization, they will not charge duty on anything that's duty free.
2. UPS charges a hidden brokerage fee of $50. that you'll not hear about until they notify you that your item is being held until you agree to pay $50. to release it. I question the morality of this, yet it can likely be argued legally that this is a company policy for 'brokerage fees'.
3. ebay has a new 'Global Shipping Program' which they've set up this year, which is tricky and misleading at best, and which I consider to be a practice of false advertising and non-compliance with the Canada-US free trade act. Please carefully pay attention to the listing and keep an eye open for 'Global Shipping Program' in which ebay lists three different costs to the buyer: 1. Item cost 2. Shipping Cost 3. 'Import Charges' I've spent hours trying to find any ebay rep prepared to address this misleading advertising, giving simple solutions to fix the problem, as this 'Global Shipping Program' does not differentiate between a duty-free item and an item that should be charged duty. You might think that 'import charges' would not be applied to duty-free items. Not the case.
