Collecting Guide To Middleman Services & Getting Stuff From Japan

Shining Raikou

Your friendly neighborhood Raikou fan!
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Japanese Merchandise & Middleman Information

Created and Maintained by:
Athena & Shining Raikou


This guide will serve as a resource for all of our collecting community at PokéBeach. Please feel free to suggest additions to the resources by posting here or PMing Athena or Shining Raikou. We hope you will find this information useful in finding your most wanted Japanese goods, or discovering fun things you didn't know existed!

The Basics

Because Pokémon originated in Japan and is generally more popular there than it is elsewhere, Japan gets a lot of cool merchandise that isn't sold in the US and elsewhere, such a large variety of toys, TCG products, plush, household items, clothing, and more. Much of these things are relatively easy to purchase over the internet via international sites, and parts of this guide will help you find where to look for certain goods. You can also use a middleman service to allow you to bid and purchase items from Japanese sites such as Yahoo! Japan, Amazon.co.jp;s official Pokémon Store, and more. This is a great tool for those who aren't fluent in Japanese or who don't have a friend living in Japan to buy them stuff that can't be bought elsewhere! There is a bit of a learning curve, but most services are not very hard to use, and the stuff you buy on these websites can often be turned around and sold in PokéBeach Marketplace if you find some rare goodies or cheap bundles of Pokémon toys!

Website Resources

Japanese Retailers:
Directly importing Japanese TCG cards and merchandise yourself is often cheaper than ordering from importers. There are several Japanese companies that cater to international customers, and often you can buy product for MSRP or cheaper. Make sure that you are aware of potential shipping costs (and customs fees) before you order, since shipping from another country is usually slower and more expensive.

AmiAmi: A Japanese warehouse retailer whose primary focus is selling figures and trading card products. They have a very large selection of Japanese Pokémon merchandise, including Japanese language TCG Cards, TCG products, figures, candy toys, and more.

Play-Asia: A large exporter that focuses primarily on Japanese video games and associated merch. You can use them to buy Japanese versions of the Pokémon video games and related video game accessories, as well as electronics accessories and a few toys and figures.

CDJapan: A site that sells a large variety of Japanese media. They are one of your best sources for purchasing Japanese DVDs, CDs, or Blu-Rays, and also carry some other merch, including books.

HobbyLink Japan: One of the largest sites for importing Japanese fandom-related items. They specialize in models and toys. Their Pokémon selection primarily includes toys and plush.

Hobby Search: Another large Japanese figure and toy exporter. They have a large selection of Pokémon toys and models.

Amazon Japan: Although the Japanese Amazon site sells a large variety of Pokémon merchandise of all sorts, only media items (books, CDs, DVDs) can be exported. Purchasing any other items will require a forwarding service or middleman.



Specific Japanese Pokémon Resellers:
These are a handful of sites that specifically cater to Pokémon fans looking to acquire product from Japan. They are an excellent source for some products that cannot be acquired from traditional retailer websites, such as Pokémon Center merchandise. However, they do charge commission fees, so they are usually expensive for more common goods and are best used to specifically acquire those rarer items.

Sunyshore: Sunyshore is run by just a small number of Pokémon fans directly for the collecting community. They pick up most of their product in person from the Tokyo Pokémon Center and specialize in plush, figures, and other toys. A great source for new and recent Pokémon Center merch!

PokéVault: Formerly known as “Hardrock-Pokemon”, PokéVault specializes in rare Japanese merchandise, TCG, and other items. They are an excellent source for old and hard-to-find plush, promos, and older Pokémon TCG cards and sets.



American Sites That Sell Imports:
Buying from an importer is often more expensive than buying directly from Japan, but has some benefits, such as easy shopping and faster, cheaper shipping.

Animeraro: This toy and collectible site is based on California and sells a variety of imported and domestic Pokémon toys.

Collector’s Cache: A Trading Card specialist company based out of Kansas. They sell Japanese TCG booster boxes, packs, promo sets, and some card-related merchandise, like sleeves and deck boxes.

Crunchyroll: In addition to their anime streaming services, they also have a site that sells some Pokémon figures and plush, and even some old Japanese booster packs.

ToysLogic: This California-based anime merchandise site sells some imported Pokémon goods, such as capsule toys, plush, Kids, and more.



Auction Sites:

Ebay: Easily the most well-known auction site. Through Ebay, you can buy Japanese Pokémon merchandise and TCG products from sellers all over the world. However, be very careful about bootlegs!

Yahoo! Japan: Yahoo! Japan is the premiere auction site within Japan. You can find a very large selection of new, old, used, and rare Pokémon cards and merch through there that can be difficult to acquire. However, in order to purchase items from there, you need to use a middleman service.



Middleman Services

Some Japanese websites do not sell to foreign customers, such as Yahoo! Japan’s Auctions and Amazon.co.jp’s Pokémon Store. In order to purchase from these websites, you need to use the services of a Middleman, which is a company that will bid and/or purchase items on your behalf and ship them to you. These companies charge service fees on top of the purchase and shipping prices for an item and typically also require a deposit, so make sure to read up on your chosen service’s terms and information before placing an order.

NOTE: To use a middleman service for purchasing or bidding, you place orders/bids directly through the middleman’s website. Do not make a Y!J or Amazon.co.jp account and try to bid or order items yourself.

Shopping Mall Japan: SMJ has bidding and purchase services for a large variety of websites for Japan and other Asian countries. Their Service Info page details their service fees, deposits, and other useful information, and they also have a Tutorials page to help new customers understand how to bid and shop for items.

Noppin: Noppin offers bidding and purchase options for a large variety of Japanese websites. They have detailed fee information available for both auctions and shopping, and also a thorough FAQ for help. For auctions, they allow bids of up to 3 times your current deposit.

Treasure Japan: Treasure Japan offers bidding and purchase options for a large variety of Japanese websites. Their commissions page also offers a conversion tool to help you understand in advance how much you will be paying for items, and there is also a “how to” page to help you understand the order process.

Celga: Celga offers bidding, purchase, and selling options for a number of Japanese retailers. They have a very simple fee system, allow you to place bids of up to double your current deposit, and also have a premiere membership option that offers additional perks.

FROM JAPAN: FJ offers bidding and purchase options through a selection of Japanese websites. Their FAQ offers a lot of useful information about Japanese auctions and they have a calculator program to easily estimate fees. Most interesting, they have a page specifically dedicated to Japanese Pokémon TCG cards, which may be useful for those new to middleman service sites or with minimal knowledge of the Japanese language.


Avoiding Bootlegs

When it comes to ordering merchandise from overseas, be careful to avoid buying bootlegged products. Not only are bootlegs worthless, poor quality items, but the money just gets funneled back into making more bootlegs. These few simple steps can help you make sure that you are buying legitimate merchandise.

  • Buy From Trusted Sites/Sellers: Ordering directly from Japanese companies (such as AmiAmi) or through proven sellers (such as PokéVault and Sunyshore) is the best way of insuring that your products are legitimate.
  • Avoid Sellers from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: These countries have very lax copyright laws. As a result, they are the source of most bootlegged merch that goes through Ebay and other auction sites.
  • Do Your Research: Look up images and prices of your product on official sites, such as the Japanese Pokémon Center site, or official manufacturer sites like Banpresto and Takara Tomy. Compare images to seller photos, and beware of sellers that use stock images instead of their own photos. Read descriptions of auctions to find any potential flaws. Be thorough.
  • If the deal looks too good to be true, it probably is: Buying legitimate merchandise can be expensive, especially large plushes, rare promo cards, older items etc. Be wary of any auctions or sales that are offering products significantly cheaper than they should be, since they will likely be bootlegged or defective. Do a quick Google search to see if the item being sold looks odd against the real thing.

PokéBeach Hosted Guides


AmiAmi purchasing guide, Bootleg Plush guide, and More to come!

Future Contributions

This guide is a work in progress! If you have websites for purchasing or middleman services that you feel deserved to be listed here, please post with a URL and some information about the site. If there's a guide you'd like to see made, please suggest it! If you yourself have an idea for a guide that would be useful to the community, feel free to discuss your idea with Athena or Shining Raikou and your guide can be stickied/added here to help others! :)

Thank you for reading!
 
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The guide has been updated with a new Middleman company, FROM JAPAN.
 
This is really helpful! I have a Tenso account, have you thought about adding them as a middleman? Their shipping rates aren't expensive at all and they ship almost anywhere!
 
Thanks for the head's up! SR and I only listed the websites and services we're familiar with, but I'll look into Tenso. :)
 
Does anyone know which site is generally cheaper? Or are there any other ways to get japanese pokemon tcg stuff for a competitive price, besides ebay?
 
For sealed product, AmiAmi is almost always the cheapest. The biggest downside is that you often have to pre order and they only really carry recent stuff. For singles and/or older product, there is no real one good answer, you just need to look around and compare prices.
 
I'd disagree about Hong Kong having a lot of bootleg products. Living in Hong Kong, I can, rather confidently, say that that's not what happens.
 
It's not so much products in Hong Kong as it is sellers on NA and EU ebay sites from Hong Kong that specifically sell a large amount of bootleg or factory reject merchandise, primarily plushies.
 
:( I think that, if your point isn't expanded and explained enough, it might leave a bad impression on others about trading with me.
 
I have a question i need answered, hopefully someone here could help me :)

I'm thinking of buying some stuff from Yahoo Japan, so I have looked into these middleman services, also Buyee and Jauce, but they all seem very similar.
Right now I'm thinking of buying through Buyee since it seems as the most simple one, but to my question:

Have you heard anything about how they handle your items or how fast they are? (I'm talking about all the middlemen not just Buyee)
and have you used a middleman yourself, was it good, bad or in between? :D

Thanks in advance!

/Adam44
 
:O nice, even more sites to explore.

The things I do before I order (like a pluche) are:


The size : Is it around the size I like (for me its around 30 cm)
Confirm the picture: Is it real? Did they make it so that it looks really big?
Compare the vendors: Compare the vendors of the product in Price, Quality and trustable for the best deal.
Check the Seller: Ratings, Revieuws and order numbers can help, But they aren't alsways the truth. Just be realistic. Eventually you can search the seller on google to confirm it.
Travel time: The travel times can differ for each seller. some can be 7 days some can be 90 days :/ .
Calculate the valuta: Don't forget to exchange the valuta in your valuta.
End price: It can happen that something really looks cheap, but at the end It is suddenly much more expensive then what was standing on the homepage.
Hold eyes open for any extra cost.
Confirm the details: Make sure you have the right details of arrival, and alse make sure how to reach the seller or middleman.

After your order:

Save the order documents: Know where to find your order data, also you can sometimes check what Is happening with your order.

When your order finally arrived you should be a happy person:)
If not :mad:, complain so many that they need to answer:p .

But know one thing, It really depends on what you are going to buy,
Some things have much more risk then the others.
 
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They're not really known for Pokemon merchandise, but Tokyo Otaku Mode is a very well-known established Japanese retailer too. They specialize mainly in selling Nendoroids and other collection figures, but also pretty much anything related to anime/manga/Japanese fashion. Don't know if you'd want to include that in the list.

As far as middleman services go, I know there's more than those few listed, except Buyee. But I don't think those are anywhere near as popular. I use a personal middleman now who gave me my own Y!J account to use.
 
Does anyone have any experience with nin-nin-game?

They appear to be the European equivalent of AmiAmi, which is why I'm interested, since shipping costs should be better for us Europeans.
 
Does anyone have any experience with nin-nin-game?

They appear to be the European equivalent of AmiAmi, which is why I'm interested, since shipping costs should be better for us Europeans.

It doesn't really seem like AmiAmi at all at first glance. They've got a lot of older product in general, compared to AmiAmi who is more current. Looking at their Pokémon TCG section, they don't even have any boxes more recent than Bandit Ring. Comparing other more recent product, their prices do seem to be generally comparable to AmiAmi's, though some things are more expensive.

Really, the best thing about this site seems to be buried in their shipping info: no import taxes for EU residents. Even moreso than shipping costs, that's a huge savings if you're ordering something above the customs limit, which is pretty low for most European countries (here it's like €25).

I can definitely see some highlights to ordering through them as opposed to AmiAmi for the lack of EU import taxes alone, or when trying to find older product that is back-ordered/sold out on AmiAmi. I'll probably try giving them a go at some point to see how it goes.

However, it doesn't seem to that great for Pokémon products in particular given their dismal selection.

EDIT: I retract my objections about their lack of Pokémon stock. It does look like they have more Pokémon TCG product, it's just very badly organized since the newer stuff does not actually appear in the "Pokémon TCG" section but is instead shoved into the general TCG section.
 
I can definitely see some highlights to ordering through them as opposed to AmiAmi for the lack of EU import taxes alone, or when trying to find older product that is back-ordered/sold out on AmiAmi. I'll probably try giving them a go at some point to see how it goes.

However, it doesn't seem to that great for Pokémon products in particular given their dismal selection.

EDIT: I retract my objections about their lack of Pokémon stock. It does look like they have more Pokémon TCG product, it's just very badly organized since the newer stuff does not actually appear in the "Pokémon TCG" section but is instead shoved into the general TCG section.

Yeah I noticed that when I tried to find the Slowbro-EX blister a while back.

As for import tax exemption, it doesn't help me as I'm in Norway, which isn't in the EU. But the threshold for import takes is around €42 so I can buy most things without paying the VAT/ toll
 
Well, I would look forward to hearing your experiences with them if/when you choose to use their services. :) If it seems like a good service, I'd be happy to add it to the OP.
 
I've had some good experience with Japan Stuffs as a middleman service. They hold some stock but mostly buy what you order from a Pokemon Center. She takes special requests too. Obviously there's a commision charged and for certain items, like books, you're better off money-wise with CDJapan. But I was able to get the new Misty sleeves when AmiAmi didn't stock them and a few nice freebies were included.
 
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