This article proposes to investigate the role played by material goods in the transnational experience. Previous research has shown that the movement of people across the world comes with a corollary of cultural flows which find their expression in multiple ways. This article looks more specifically at the kind of commodities that international students bring from home when living in the UK. Informed by interdisciplinary research, it reports on a quantitative study with some qualitative elements investigating the motivation for bringing specific goods, and the nature of those goods. It also looks at the issue of authenticity of provision for the sample by interrogating the importance of the locating process