Does Anyone Need Assistance or a Buying Guide for Japanese Media?

[Hexadecimal*]

It's stating the obvious when I say I blow a lot of money on collectibles. To do this I've had to become pretty knowledgeable about where to look, what to type in, and what to use if they don't ship overseas.

Basically, if anyone ever has a piece of Japanese merchandise you're having trouble tracking down, hit me up. I can pretty easily at least find out the rarity, how much you should expect to pay, and which site would be best to keep an eye out for it. If you want I can give you my Skype to help you in real time if you're super confused. Just keep in mind, if it's anything... "Adult" you're responsible for checking the laws in your country. You can and will get in trouble for buying these items.

Otherwise... Does anyone want me to type up a guide here so you can just do it yourself? I only ask instead of just doing it right now because I'm at work, and it might take me a bit, so I don't want to if there's zero interest.

For some reason I have stupid good luck when it comes to these things, so thought I'd pass that on to anyone here. It may take awhile, but I really would be more than happy to help track anything down no matter how long it takes. Usually it's pretty astonishing how fast I can find things. I don't think my life sized Oxmox Rayman statue was even a year.

[Petie]

I have nothing specific I'm looking for but I think if you have a guide you'd like to share, don't wait for someone to ask. More often than not, people don't realize they need something like this until they suddenly do and having it already here could wind up being useful! Of course, don't feel obligated to do it either - I'm just saying that if it's been something you've been thinking about doing anyway, there's no harm and it could prove interesting even to those who haven't thought about it.

[Hexadecimal*]

Ah, OK... I don't feel like sleeping right now, so I guess I could type up a little something.

Like I said, this is just a general thing; if there's something specific I might have better recommendations.

First off, you'll want to check out this website an maybe make an account: http://myfigurecollection.net/

Near the bottom you'll see listings for figures, goods, and media. I check those every day because they're pretty good at staying up to date with anything new that's added and you can subscribe to any entries to stay informed on when you can pre-order or buy (some items are exclusives)! Using the search you can look up a character or series to see what's available for them. Please note that the database isn't perfect; I have a vast amount of Adachi merchandise that hasn't been added.

When looking for any of these items I advise you to stay away from popular sites like eBay or Amazon. There's an insane amount of bootlegs out there and often you have sellers who don't even realize they have a fake.

IMO, the best site you can order from is AmiAmi: http://amiami.com/ They have competitive prices, allow order combination, have a used section that's updated every night where you can get lucky and find rare figures, and you don't have to pay anything upfront like a lot of other sites. However, they frown on cancelling and you will probably be banned if you ever don't pay for your order on time (they allow a week to pay).

Mandarake is another popular site: http://order.mandarake.co.jp/order/ You can't pre-order, but often they have pretty good deals. You get better results by searching in Japanese so use My Figure Collection for that. Look at the item's page, click on the character or series name, and copy and paste the kanji to use in your search. They deal with new, used, and damaged items so be careful and use Google translate. Some of the merchandise is actually HEAVILY damaged and you don't want that.

Otherwise there might be more suitable sites depending on where you live. Anime Island is a good US based shopped but then you'll get your items later and sometimes the prices are higher than Japanese shops. Let me know where you live and I can help you find a legit and good shop for your area.

For rarer stuff that's already been released, you'll probably want to try shops that don't ship outside of Japan (once again you'll need to search kanji) the best ones are

Yahoo Japan Auctions: http://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/

You'll see Buyee advertised, but I advise not to use them. The only good quality they have is that you can bid in real time. I suggest using the proxy Proxy Rabbit Japan: http://www.proxyrabbitjapan.com/ because they have zero hidden or bullshit fees they slap you with and they combine orders as well. Buyee adds a fee to EVERYTHING they do.

Suruga-Ya: http://www.suruga-ya.jp/ is AMAZING for finding extremely rare items. They specialize in doujin, but check every day because you never know if that figure, wall scroll, key chain, or whatever will suddenly be in stock.

i decided to keep this brief, so tell me if I need to flesh anything out or you have any other questions.