This is an archive from Klassic Note Web Reports

Wednesday, 29 June 2016 Okay, now that I have enough images to prove my point, let's start. *laughs*

If you have not known (which is fine, I kept it quiet till now haha), I've been shopping. And instead of doing it the usual way, technology today has allowed for some transcendental trades (pun not intended) over the "auction house" that is the Internet. Courtesy to Buyee for hosting Yahoo! Auctions and Tenso for being the most reliable Japanese forwarding company ever since I knew of them back in 2014, they combine to make the biggest convenience there can ever be till date: You can now bid in Japanese items in auctions and ship them internationally to your doorstep! And seeing that as an opportunity, I couldn't wait to put my hands in it. And thus comes this experience, which is also a good time to experiment the costs, viability and quality of purchase for a Japanese auction website.

THE BEGINNINGS
Before I even thought of paying for anything, there must be a beginning. And this one is in the long run of my fandom of these girls who I know and love (okay who cares if this is cheesy now), and finding goods from them online is getting tougher by the day, considering I missed like, 5 years due to my ability to fork out anything in life. But then again it has also gotten easier, and surprisingly, more obvious. Quite a lot of search results in Google for stuff like "XXX bromide" (in Japanese, "bromides" refer to the photos they print out as a special gift to a certain commercial item) brought me to Yahoo! Auctions many a time, but now things have changed. Buyee, a middleman buying service, has kindly brought several companies under their tree, and sources deliveries to Tenso. And so, the bridge between the minimalist Japanese (if you heard the news recently) and the desperate fans of the world is complete. If you need more understanding, I could've just done a YouTube video on it, but yeah, I don't. Go find out yourself if you want to know more. In essence, this brings in my inner shopper thinking that started this experiment. Along with some sellers who have been, at the right time, listed stuff that I want at low prices (like, within 100yen low), and then I decided to give it a try.

THE PROCESS
Honestly saying? It wasn't that difficult. There is the regular bid and the sniper bid. For those who are real noob at auctioning like me, the latter one only bids 5 minutes before the bid time closes. Because there is a time for it, there is a difference for doing it at first and at the last (few) minutes. And considering my limited knowledge in Japanese, I has to keep the search terms for finding those items simple, and yes it is actually pretty easy. Within a week, I ended up winning (despite missing 1 for Tomacchan *sob*) 10 auctions, almost all of them are bromides, and one clear file which I will show you guys later. It's surprisingly expensive, just so you know, because they will prompt you on accident insurance and inspection insurance, both of which will only be of use if anything fails in the process, respectively if the item gets damaged in the process and/or it doesn't pass inspection ie. you auctioned out a banned item? Anyways, it may sound dumb, so I tried without all of them besides one, which came later because I was giving a song from Tsuji Shion's 3rd single (review here) and all in all, the overall process (including paying the bidders, services and consolidations which I will show you later) took about three weeks. Yeah, that long. Well, considering it's possible to delay shipment from the sellers who are regular humans themselves which can be as long as six months, this is considered fast... I guess? This is quite a good waste of time and money, so I won't really say this is worth it. The low price point is very different when you reside OUTSIDE JAPAN. Dammit.

The online receipt from Buyee, taken at date of this post.

THE PACKAGE ARRIVAL
Yes, so finally we can talk about what I received. A lot, in summary. This kind of explains the huge amount of shipping fees considering I only ship considerable lesser than the big box that appeared at my doorstep. Like Aniplex+, Buyee is a jerk.
Anyways, what's inside. If you've seen the receipt (now then you read it huh) and recognised the patterns in the titles of the auction items, you'd notice four distinct sellers with their items. And quite unexpectedly, the package is from their original sellers, which means large envelopes and a lot of cardboard and paper just to make this secure. Hey, if you've noticed four years ago, this is how Japanese do delivery. That dedication to make packages undamaged.

The overall contents VS the amount of stuff that surrounds them. And there's the big box full of stuffing. Thanks, sellers.

In total, I had seven Aki-chan bromides (because I love her sooo much hehe), one from Mina-chan, and a clear file from Mikakoshi because I know I'll never buy one of her singles anytime soon. (Soon, Mikakoshi. *wink*)

Da best. *muacks* And in a surprisingly smaller package. I expected A4 though. Seems like it didn't list that out.

Overall packaging is secure, most of them are in their original wrappers (which explains how much they kept them as much as to use them, like me), and besides dust I guess there isn't much of a difference to getting a new one. Some sellers (I expect, male) even padded the photos (and the clear file) in cardboard so as to prevent it from being bent. Man, this thing, I'll never do. Imagine, you're an auction seller. Would you even bother to do that much? Well, if you're Japanese you probably will. I may be all praises about them, but look at this! I cannot even criticise on anything!
This will nonetheless make me excited for the many scanning I have to do myself over the next few hours (hopefully) so I can, you know, keep my phone homescreen occupied before Ayachi's photo album catches up. Well, that is, if you read The Entertainment News for those anyway.

I may have overdone this, but then it is also an experiment. So I went big, and paid big too. In general, it's not advisable to buy individual items if you want to bring them back home, and though Tenso is the most reasonable in payments for international delivery doesn't mean service charges doesn't count, and that is Buyee's fault. Although honestly saying, it's still cheap by any means, and if you're here to find out whether you can grab some limited edition items either newly released (like, Aki-chan's live concert goods last weekend new) to stuff some years back, this is some heaven for those who have the money to do it. Also, if you don't feel bad about this all the items above (besides the CD) ARE NOT FOR SALE. It's written on the items themselves. So you are kind of doing this illegally if you don't know.


Until next time which will probably not happen, I hope this gives you a good idea of what to expect if you're dealing with an auction item of that Aki-chan bromide you very want to get in your hands because you failed to get it when it released from it's first pressing. I mean, auctions may help you from getting stuff anywhere from the past, but it'll never get you the excitement back then. Also, prepare to pay the price if you want the latest of stuff you never had an opportunity to be at Japan to buy them (after paying thousands to get there of course).

Cya guys next time, and until next time... I probably will not be buying anything from an "auction house" anymore. Unless I win the next lottery draw, or if I even buy one of the tickets lol

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