u/AdWhicha1

▲ 1 r/bemani

Anyone else use a proxy for konami exclusives and bemani merch, sharing what worked from yahoo auction japan

Been playing IIDX since LR2 days and finally hit a wall last year trying to get my hands on the IIDX 27 Heroic Verse SOUND TRACKS set (the limited Konami Style edition with the extra remix disc) and a couple of the older Bemani Sound Team artist signature merch drops. Konami Style International doesn't carry the older stuff and the e-amusement passport gate situation has made it harder than ever to grab anything fresh out the gate.

Yahoo Auction Japan is where the back catalog lives. The Heroic Verse OST set was going for 8,000 to 12,000 yen depending on whether the obi was intact. Older BSS T-shirts from collabs (the DOLCE x BSS one specifically) show up roughly once a quarter at 3,000 to 5,000 yen.

What I learned across three orders:

The Konami Style limited soundtracks ship in those weird thick double jewel cases that don't crush well, so packaging matters. Most proxies just throw them in with bubble wrap.

Per item fees are the killer for our community because we're often buying one OST at a time when something specific finally appears, not bulk hauling. Buyee at 500 yen per is fine for big orders but absurd on a single 3,000 yen tee. Tried Onemall on my most recent two orders, 200 yen flat, and the packaging on the OST was actually better than what Buyee did on the first one (the Heroic Verse case had foam corner protectors).

For the bemani specific stuff like the e-amusement participation merch and the older arcade location exclusives, those almost never appear on regular ebay so a proxy is basically the only option. If you've been holding off on grabbing some 4th Mix or 11th era nostalgia stuff because the fees felt high, the gap between proxies is actually wider than I expected.

If you grab Konami Style new releases day one through a proxy auto buy, has the JP shop side ever flagged proxy warehouse addresses on you. Heard mixed things from a Discord chat last month.

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u/AdWhicha1 — 9 hours ago

Picked up a lot of about 50 OCG cards off yahoo auction japan for around 8,000 yen. Mostly older secret rares with a couple ghost rares mixed in. Pretty happy with the actual haul, the lot was solid and a couple of the cards are ones I'd been hunting for a while.

The shipping side is what's killing me though. My proxy quoted almost $30 for international shipping on top of the service fee and domestic shipping from the seller to their warehouse. Once you add it all up the total creeps close to what I'd pay just buying the same cards individually off TCGPlayer. Kinda defeats the whole point of buying from japan.

Consolidating multiple auction wins helps spread the shipping cost but I don't always have several orders running at the same time. For a one-off lot the overhead is rough. Looked at a few different services and Onemall had lower listed rates for lighter packages but haven't tested it yet.

Packaging is another wildcard. Yahoo auction sellers are all over the place. Some use toploaders and hard cases, others literally just slide everything into a padded envelope with no protection. Had cards show up with dented corners from bad seller packing and no proxy can really fix that.

Right now the fees make it hard to justify grabbing lots off yahoo auctions unless the cards in the lot are stuff you genuinely can't find anywhere else.

reddit.com
u/AdWhicha1 — 16 days ago