If seller is willing only way to drop cost of customs is to have the shipper mark it as broken/faulty. Will absolutely not work at all times.
Edit: or go in person or have someone who is traveling from seller’s country to yours bring it and not declare on customs forms. Also not 100% effective. This is also known as smuggling. For small personal tech items, almost certainly no major repercussions or difficulty. Your milage may vary.
Mint is a great general entry point to Linux in general.
I’d say Pop!OS or Garuda Gaming edition for traditional style, and Bazzite for “Atomic”(harder to accidentally Bork), are better ootb(out of the box) gaming distros. I.e. less downloading and tweaking to get games running, more things installed from first boot.