Yes, How?

Is there a Japanese auction site where the users send their item overseas?
Is there a service like Tenso.com, but not so expensive?

I am really unaware of any sort of service -- even one that just picked up used games at a local store and resold them at a marginal markup. I suppose it's just because there isn't a big market for it, so there's no real economic niche.

I have been fortunate to happen to have a friend overseas at all times, more or less, so I just get them to swing by a store, pick something up and mail it over.

You're right -- using a full blown proxy service just for a used game (already a fairly cheap product, typically) is excessive and kind of counterproductive price wise. My best suggestion is to get in contact directly with some ebay sellers -- you see some used JP games up from time to time and from what I've been told they're pretty great about requests and picking specific stuff up.

If you're lucky enough to live in New York City, Book-Off sells used japanese video games.... :-)

Book-Off is currently under renovation and expanding to a bigger store space that
will open on April 17th (next Saturday).

chamcham Wrote:If you're lucky enough to live in New York City, Book-Off sells used japanese video games.... :-)

Book-Off is currently under renovation and expanding to a bigger store space that
will open on April 17th (next Saturday).

Hmm, I have some japanese friends who visit new york often. I'm going to ask them to pick up some stuff for me if possible. Or I could just buy ps1 Japanese games off ebay. I do like amazon.jp selection, but the shipping itself is so dangerous(high price).

Probably what ninetimes said about contacting ebay sellers is the best. I suspect many ebay sellers are in Japan or have connections which can hit up the vintage stores in Akiba or Nipponbashi in Osaka. The used game collections in those places is just insane....original SNES Chrono Trigger game for 1000yen... @_@

If you're lucky enough to find a Play n Trade store near you, they sell a lot of Japanese games and consoles and such. No shipping charges (obviously) and pretty decent prices, but the stores are really, really hard to find.

if you buy in bulk then using Tenso and book off is probaby your best bet as far as the net goes i'd have thought. Just for 1 game though would work out expensive though.
I bought a new Jisho using Rakuten and Tenso and it's saving me an arm and a leg!

http://www.play-asia.com/

They offer new and used games. Somewhat expensive, though, but the shipping is pretty cheap.

vix86 Wrote:Probably what ninetimes said about contacting ebay sellers is the best. I suspect many ebay sellers are in Japan or have connections which can hit up the vintage stores in Akiba or Nipponbashi in Osaka. The used game collections in those places is just insane....original SNES Chrono Trigger game for 1000yen... @_@

From my experience 1000yen for the original SNES Chrono Trigger was a bit overpriced, actually.


Anyway, if you have any particular requests, I can head to my local Book-Off (or whatever) and look into how much it would be to send it to you.
I know Nukemarine at some point mentioned that Army people can send stuff to the US at the same price as sending from San Francisco.

Well, I browsed book off online store and their used items cost more than new items from plain old western ebay. Play-Asia is even more expensive.

For instance, check this:
http://page14.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/au...s173051441 => 1,840 円 => ~20 dollars.

Too bad they won't ship overseas. 海外発送 - 対応しません

The problem is just the economics of the matter for any sort of business/entrepreneur. Buying 'cheap' items from overseas just isn't going to be cheap, unless you've got a friend doing it at cost. The price of the item is irrelevant, the issue is that you have to add enough on the top to compensate for handling/processing, plus margin on top for profit seeing as how you had to acquire it to begin with.

Presuming its not a hassle to acquire, somewhere in the range of 15-20 dollars on top of whatever the cost of an item (this would be shipping, handling, profit, etc, lumped together) is pretty reasonable. It just gets less and less reasonable looking the cheaper the item initially is. The amount of costs/profit involved don't really go down just because the initial cost of the item is lower (well, until we start talking large items and freight and blah blah blah). I have seen used copies of FF13 go for about ~40 shipped on ebay, so that seems to be about in line.

Naturally this changes somewhat if the seller is a used game store, has constant stock on hand, doesn't need to purchase the used game at its sale price because they already bought it off of the former owner directly, et cetera. But, again, the market for used japanese games outside of japan is probably very small, so I don't think that exists.

So you're stuck with buying from people who sell at a markup from a typical used store price/native auction price OR finding a buddy in japan who will proxy bid for you and ship it at cost because they're a super cool person.

I don't live in japan. I'm not that person. I'd offer if I was!

Actually it goes for less. New copies of FF13 go for 35 dollars including shipping.

Guess you're right. I'll have to find a friend to ship them.