If we add up the value of my collection by the price items sell for at aftermarket pricing, or even at retail pricing, you won’t come anywhere close to what I’ve actually paid for my collection. In fact, I spent well under either total. More often than not I do my best to find the best discount I can for the items I purchase. To buy these items, I utilize a series of resources.
A little introduction, often times to purchase goods secondhand from Japan you will need a proxy to complete your order. A proxy is someone who will order your things, have it shipped to their location, and then ship it to you. Sometimes it is an individual, such as a friend located nearby, or someone who just so happened to visit Japan at the time. Sometimes, it is a large warehouse operating a business. There are benefits and cons to either.
Individuals acting as a proxy: because they usually are not an official business, or a large operation with extensive funding, sometimes their service fees are high. This is because you have to pay their admission (if it is an event), their time, their transportation, and occasionally, their storage locker fee if they need to stash your items while they shop at other stores for you. If it is an event ticket prices can vary and if you are the only buyer for that event oftentimes these fees will be covered solely by you instead of divided by the number of others in the group order. I unfortunately like many niche series, and have sometimes had to cover these costs, at worst costing me an additional $100 for the order.
Large corporate proxy services: The benefit of large corporate proxy services is often times you do not have to cover these additional fees, and usually only have to pay a low service fee as a result. However, these services do not participate in exclusive events, such as the Sailor Moon Museum. and will only purchase from online sites if you need them to. Usually, these sites are vendors like Animate, Amazon.jp, Mercari.jp, Rakuten, and auctions like Yahoo Japan Auctions, but if you send them a link to another site they may make an exception and order the item for you by your request.
Zenmarket.jp
Loyalty Program
So for Mercari.jp, Amazon.jp, and Yahoo Auctions Japan I use Zenmarket.jp.
Mercari is a second-hand market, but online. You can find rare items, event-exclusive items, and many other kinds of figures and merchandise for relatively cheap, or at least cheaper than standard aftermarket prices. I have purchased scale figures and rare nendoroids for such a good deal that they were cheaper than retail prices by a significant amount.
I prefer to use Zenmarket.jp as it has a loyalty program, and its service fee is just 500 yen per transaction. Once you surpass a certain number of orders per year, Zenmarket allows you to build up credit that you can pay off at the end of the month. So for example, let’s say a grail figure pops up for auction, but you are between paychecks, you can use this credit you’ve built up to purchase the item and then pay it off as soon as you are able.
Buy from any site:
If you have a figure that releases on a site such as Native or Aniplex that comes with an exclusive good(s), and you’d like to purchase it the simplest way to do so is to just copy/paste the link of the site into their search bar. Once you do that, you will be greeted with a page that asks you to give a bit more information such as quantity and specific requests for the order, and you will be able to request a quote.
If you agree with the quote they will purchase your item for you, and then you will pay for it.
Once all items reach their warehouse, you can select how many items will be in a single parcel. I usually consolidate since express shipping from Japan to the USA is so expensive, much less multiple shipments.
Cons:
The only con I have with this site is that when you need to deposit money into the account, it will take a percentage off. This means to properly deposit the amount necessary for your items you will need to add a bit extra to your account just to cover this difference, and sometimes it is a pain to calculate, so you may end up applying more than you mean to. I have yet to try a refund of this balance, but I imagine it would be futile as it will be taken up by their transaction fees.
Buyee
So this is the service I least utilize, but is well recommended by others.
I used to use Buyee for Mercari.jp (before ZenMarket added it to their roster) so I personally just browse Mercari and scour the sites while using the Japanese language variations of the anime titles, i.e. Black Butler = ???. If I want a specific brand or item type the Japanese variation of the item type/brand, i.e, clearfile = ??????? , or Kotobukiya = ?????. If I know the exact event or exhibition I would put that as well if I wanted to narrow down the search results, i.e. Black Butler Exhibition: Rich Black = ???? RICH BLACK. I then filter it to only items that are still available by selecting “For Sale” = ???
Once you find an item, and if it is available for you to purchase it will say, “Buy this Item!” It will then open a new tab for Buyee and you can purchase it.
At this point I usually select “Add to shopping cart” instead of “Proceed to order page.” This way I can cross-check and price check as many options as possible for items, and buy the lowest priced item.
If an item is not available for purchase via Buyee it will look like this. At this time you will need to contact a private individual proxy to personally buy it for you, such as a friend. There are many available via Facebook anime groups for buying merchandise. If I get permission from my service to mention them I will in another post.
When you order something on Buyee it will offer you many different inspection fee options. I personally do the 500 yen fee for standard which includes shipment insurance and inspection, so they will inspect and verify that my order came in good condition. In the event it does not come in good condition they will handle the return and refund process.
You will be responsible for the domestic shipping fee for the item, but Buyee lets you know this as well so you aren’t completely caught off guard.
Once you are ready to pay you have 3 different options, Paypal, Credit Card, or Alipay. I use PayPal and have it set to my credit card. If you want to change your payment options you will need to override it in your account settings otherwise it will automatically take it from your default payment method.
Once your order is placed, Buyee has a tracking of your order’s progress. Once it arrives at the warehouse you can start the packaging process for shipment. If you have multiple items you can consolidate your packages into one large package. You can request that they completely remove the original shipment packaging the seller used to decrease bulk, or they could include additional protective packaging. This is entirely up to preference, but I personally always do express shipping and protective packaging to ensure my items arrive quickly and safely. So far the only issue I had was with buying a bulk order. The seller with-held some items but I contacted Buyee and the seller refunded me.
If for some reason the seller is unable to ship the item or is unresponsive you will be refunded.
AmiAmi
Sometimes, if you are quick enough, you can get a great deal on AmiAmi’s pre-owned section. Every day they update their pre-owned listings. For me, this happens around 3-4 A.M, which requires that I stay up super late, or wake up early to peruse the listings and hope I get the item I’m trying for, or just miss out on it altogether. Chances are, if you aren’t on at this exact time and refreshing the listing, you won’t be able to add it to your cart long enough to get to the checkout process. Lucky for me, I’m a nostalgia collector, so my series merchandise tends to stick around long enough for me to pick up.
This is the perfect way to pick up cheap nendoroids, prize figures, and scales from a retailer you trust.
Pay attention to their rating system for the quality of the item you are purchasing. Sometimes they will include pictures of any damages, but it is rare that the items are terribly damaged.
Mandarake
Mandarake is another great option when it comes to buying anime figures. They are a Japanese chain store that specializes in selling all kinds of merchandise, from official animation cels, to obscure doujinshi. They have stores all over Japan, but they also have an online store that ships internationally. Furthermore, they tend to be a bit more expensive than some other places, but the quality of their merchandise is very high.
We hope this guide was helpful in finding the best place to buy merchandise for your collection. Happy shopping! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. Thanks for reading!
