Yahoo Japan Auction and I

Today I would like to take a moment to talk about my most recent experience with Yahoo Japan Auction and the shopping deputy service that I chose for this transaction – Goody Japan

I am sure I am not the only otaku who would like to get their hands on a limited release character goods that are only available in Japan, or somehow you miss out on an item and it’s nowhere to be found on the internet and the only place it’s available for aftermarket auction is in Japan.  Yahoo Japan Auction is by far the most popular auction site in Japan, have a limited released item you missed out?  The chances is you may just find it in Yahoo Japan Auction.  However, due to language barrier and the fact most sellers won’t ship oversea, it present a huge problem for people like me who have no relatives or friends who live in Japan.

In this particular example, I somehow missed out an opportunity to get my hands on a Dollfie Dream Dynamite Escalayer (that was available in USA… but I somehow missed out on it regardless! Silly me).  Anyway, there were a few listing in ebay where I could have gotten my hands on the dollfie but their markup premium was close to 40% (about $890 auction for a dollfie and the listed price in the USA website was $638), which made it very difficult for me to accept.  My searches have led me to Yahoo Japan Auction and I was willing to wait for the right price, some listing was much as 110000 yen and obviously I wasn’t willing to pay that much either.  I have looked at some old auction listing and some of them were in the range of 68000 yen to low 70k, so I made up my mind that if I saw an auction like that again, I would go for it.  The wait didn’t take long, I finally came across this auction:

75000 yen buy it now, just the way I want it, I am not a huge fan of bidding item, I would much rather pay more for a buy it now so I can guarantee to win the item.  So the next step was to choose a deputy service.  The old shopping service I used a few years back don’t deal with auction so I have to find a new service.   My first destination for this mission critical project was to head to Dannychoo.com to look up any information because I knew there were quite a few people over in Dannychoo that frequently deal with Yahoo Japan Auction, then I came across this post (member Actar and EL Tboy both recommended Goody Japan), which suggested several services and I have took my time to compare their rates.

The three services that I gave serious consideration were:

http://www.tenso.com

The tenso website was somewhat confusing to me and led me to believe I have to actually bid on the auction myself, something I couldn’t do.

http://www.japan-auction-agency.com/

Bank fee: 300 yen

Paypal transaction fee: 3.9% + 40 yen

Commission: 500yen +8% over closing price

http://www.goody-japan.com

Bank fee: 300 yen

Goody Japan has a variable commission rate table, and in my case its an over 40001 yen item so I would be charged at 10% rate.

At first glance, it would appear the Japan auction agency has a lower commission rate but taking a closer look you would notice the paypal fee of 3.9 percent + 40yen, which will add up to be 11.9 percent+500 yen vs. 10 percent.  A merely 2% difference but it’s a more expensive option nonetheless.

I ended up going with the Goody-Japan option and here a total run down of the cost.  After I put in the order for the auction item, I received an email from Goody Japan fairly quickly to instruct me to send them deposit of the full auction price.  After I sent the money through paypal about 11:00pm in Japan’s night time, the auction was completed within an hour.

[Auction ID]     [Name of the item]
(Qty) / (Price) / (Commission) / (Domestic shipping) / (Bank fee)

Now if I were to convert the cost back to US dollars, I may actually ended up paying more than what I would have paid in that ebay option.  But in the ebay case, I was dealing with a person taking all the commission (a bit high I have to say); in the Goody Japan case I was dealing with 2 different people each charging an honest amount of commission (It’s all a mood point at the end because I found out that expensive ebay auction ended up getting sold at the lower price, but it was already too late and I am fine to pay a little more for the  educational experience on dealing with Yahoo Japan Auction because I might use it again someday).  I just checked Yahoo Japan Auction yesterday and notice the same seller is listing another Dollfie Escalayer, only 10000 yen more expensive , I guess it was a good timing for me to snatch it at 75000 yen.

Since I had a good experience with Goody Japan, I have decided to give the shopping service a try on Amazon Japan items.  In this case, I am going for the Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro na and Fortune Arterial perfect visual books.

I have to pay 15% commission, but since Amazon Japan doesn’t charge domestic shipping for those two books, it sort of even out.

All in all, I am very happy with Goody Japan Deputy service and I believe I will use them again.  One worthy note to mention is that they managed to send my package out around the Golden week holiday, something I didn’t expect to happen.

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