Cheapest way to buy on Yahoo Auctions?

[quuador]

I personally use Noppin.com, but you’re also drowned in middleman fees in that case. Cards below 2000 yen or so will have 500 yen middleman fee (even when you win it for 1 yen). But when you buy something of 200,000 yen, you could end up paying about 17k yen on top of it…

Having said that, I never had any problems with them. They always package very good, you can combine multiple auctions and they are stored up to 60 days, and recently I tried using SAL as shipping option instead of EMS (I always have to pay hundreds of eurpos on import fees when it arrived with this shipping option). With SAL it’s maybe less secured, but the shipping time is the same for me. It’s 2 weeks + 1 week at customs + 50-350 euro import fees with EMS vs 3 weeks with direct free delivery for SAL.

Here is all the information about Noppin I can give:

@quuador

I’ve used Noppin for quite some time now, so I can give some general information of how it works:

When you place a bid on something you can update your account’s max amount to bid, by authenticating with PayPal. So let’s say you put 10,000 Japanese yen in your Noppin account, then you are allowed to bid for a total of 30,000 yen on multiple auctions at once (it’s always 3x). Note that this is only authenticating to PayPal, you aren’t paying anything yet in this step, and you also won’t have to pay anything if you don’t win any auctions.

If you win one or multiple auctions you will receive a payment notification. Now you can simply click on the Pay button on Noppin, and because you’ve already authenticated with PayPal when you’ve put a max amount to bid on your account, you won’t have to log into PayPal again. You will have to pay for the price you’ve won it for, plus shipping from the seller to Noppin, plus some Noppin middleman fees (usually 500 Japanese Yen, but the higher the won-price, the higher the fees are (I once had to pay little over 100 USD on middleman fees on my most expensive won auction): www.noppin.com/portal_pages/our_fees_for_auction_service

Now it will take a couple of days before the packages arrive from the seller to Noppin’s warehouse. Once it’s in the warehouse you will have up to 60 days to create a shipping order. This allows you to combine multiple won auctions into one shipment to you. You can already create a shipping order while the packages are still incoming from the seller to Noppin’s warehouse if you want to.

Once everything of your shipping order has arrived at Noppin’s warehouse you’ll receive another email notification: this time to pay for the shipment. Shipping fees are usually around 2,200 Japanese Yen, but it depends on the weight of the package: www.noppin.com/portal_pages/shipping.

And once that is paid, they will package everything very well (I never had a problem with the packaging, they do an excellent job with that), and then ship it to you and give you a tracking number.

One more thing to note: They always ship it with EMS, so in most countries you’ll have to pay import fees when the package is above a certain price. I live in The Netherlands, so everything above roughly 2,400 Japanese Yen (excluding shipping) means I’ll have to pay 20+ euros on import. My most expensive package so far was 165,000 Japanese Yen, for which I had to pay an additional 325 euro import fee. So keep that in mind when combing orders. Sometimes it’s cheaper to have two separate orders shipping from Noppin to you, than one big package with large amount of import fees.

If you have any questions regarding Noppin feel free to ask. I don’t know everything, but since I’ve used it pretty often so far, I hope I’ve provided you and others reading this with some general information of how Noppin works.

@quuador

One thing to add, when you add money to your deposit on Noppin, you can spend three times that amount. So let’s say you deposit 10,000 Japanese Yen, then you can place bids on auctions up to 30,000 Japanese Yen.

You will only pay once you’ve won an auction. Once you’ve paid, that amount goes back to your deposit spending limit again.

For example: Let’s say you indeed deposited 10,000 Japanese Yen, and you can bid up to 30,000 (note that you’ve only authorized for a spending limit, you haven’t actually paid for anything yet). You then bid 15,000 on one item, and 5,000 on another. You now have 10,000 left in your deposit to spend.
A few days later you end up winning the 15,000 one. You pay for it (including some middleman fees) - only now you actually pay and have money subtracted from your PayPal account. You now have 25,000 spending limit again. And let’s say you loose the 5,000 one later on, putting you back at the 30,000 spending limit again.

You’ll only have to raise this deposit spending limit if you want to bid high on an auction (or multiple auctions simultaneously).

@quuador

EDIT: One thing to add about my quotes above. It is possible to request a different shipping option with Noppin. I personally haven’t used this yet, but I plan to do so the next time I order. When using SAL I should be able to avoid customs and import fees all together. The shipping time to my country may take a bit longer, but since it doesn’t have to stay at Dutch customs the total shipping time might be pretty similar. Except much cheaper because I don’t have to pay any additional import fees.
I haven’t tested it yet, but a friend recommended it to me, and I will try it next time I order from Noppin.com. However, I currently have no ongoing auctions that I’ve placed a bid on; not sure when I will.

As I said above, I have used SAL a few times now, so no more import fees on arrival for me.

Having said all that, to answer your title: find a friend online who lives in Japan and doesn’t charge any middleman fees. I got contacts in Brazil, South Korea, Germany, Italy, and Russia who all don’t charge anything but the costs of the cards themselves and shipping. Since Japan is the land where Pokémon is very popular, finding someone who is willing to do the same without middleman fees shouldn’t be too difficult I think.

Greetz,
Quuador