Quoted: In magazines for the rich, like the Robb Report, they advertise islands for sale all the time. Usually they sell for like $9 million or somewhere abouts, which makes this thread useless for about 99.99% of us, but hypothetically, if you were to buy your own island, could you declare it your own country, and then proceed to purchase whatever weapons you wanted from whatever suppliers you wanted??? Of course it would depend on whether or not the supplier, say FN or HK would export the weapons to you, but what do you think???? Do you think you could get around Belgian and German export laws??? Can you declare land you own, international waters, your own country??? What I wouldn't give to get a FN M249 or an HK UMP at government pricing....
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Islands can be bought for less than the $9m, look at some of the rocks in the Caribbean. One I know quite well is Barbaretta, and the asking price of $6m is quite negotiable. There are island, there are land masses and then there are rocks.
The problem with islands is that they always already belong to one rather possessive country or another. They're not too hepped up on losing real estate.
Thus begat several interesting attempts at creating land where there used to be sea. Complicated by the recently expanded territorial limits, look to the 1950's when Hemingway and some of his drunk friends attempted to establish a Sovereign nation off of Cuba aboard a mass of floating logs tethered to a high spot in the ocean.
About the closest anyone has ever come to establishing a nation is the fellow who overtook an abandoned drilling platform in the North Sea or off of England someplace. He managed to get thru most of the complications, but the key to international acceptance is becoming a party to the International Postal Union... the question being will other countries honor the postage stamps that you generate and affix to letters mailed from your kingdom.
The currency issues are fairly irrelevant.
see www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sealand.htm
here's my favorite: http://www.fantasyinternational.com/prod02.htm