Don’t think I have been to more than 20 stores in all my years living here, 346 stores in three weeks is quite the feat lol
Agree with all your points! All good observations. Seems like you really got to heart of what card collecting is actually like in Japan, instead of the often idealised fantasy land. Of course the real challenge is balancing hobbies while living and working here, but that’s a whole different adventure.
The mental fatigue is real. But the hype and the fun keeps you going, I did shops for around 5–8 hours a day.
The thing is, it gets easier with time.
Do not try to negotiate. This is a big no-go.
The only time you should think about negotiating is if you are spending 1 million yen and up on a single card. Negotiating is seen as very rude.
Also, when checking condition, pick out the cards you want before asking a clerk. In general, I would not ask staff to come more than twice. The only exception is if you are actually buying a lot of cards in the store.
Interesting to hear your perspective. 20 stores are already quite a lot. I guess you live in Tokyo or Osaka, then?
If I worked in Japan, I would never have visited this many shops, that’s why my holidays was the best opportunity to do so 
Great tips! The negotiating piece is key and the ettiquette for selecting cards. Thanks!
Definitely will be watching this post mature further.
Glad to help.
Feel always free to ask should you have more questions 
Congratulations on your trip! A dream I also hope to fulfill one day. Some amazing pickups in there as well, very nice!
Really impressive set of cards!
The masaki promos look great for a binder collection.
I’m curious, how did you go about finding the stores to begin with? Just a google maps search? Or is there some better method that I haven’t thought of?
Thank you.
The masaki cards look even good for grading
I did a mix of Google maps, watching Videos and googling.
Amazing, i’m going to head to Japan next month. Can’t wait to do some card hunting.
Enjoy it. And have a good hunt
Oh wow! What an amazing collection of cards you picked up. Shopping for cards 5-8 hours a day in Japan kinda sounds like a dream 
Awesome write up. Was super fun to follow and read 
I can’t wait to go to Japan this October and I am definitely taking your tips into consideration!
Is stores overpricing also seen as very rude?
Thank you for sharing! And those pickups are amazing 
Interesting to see a lot of your pickups be cards with yellow price tags on them. My experience was that those almost always signified damage to some degree. And basically anytime a card was placed in like a “SALE” section it probably wasn’t worth looking at if the intent was to grade.
But some very nice grabs still! Especially those masakis, I found most shops overpriced them just like the other super popular cards (ponchos).
I also notice some pickups from Mandarake, how was your experience there? I noticed they used a 1-10 scale for condition on their cards but seldom did I ever see a card with above a 7 written on it. Even for brand new modern cards, which kinda led me to believe they just use the 7 as a blanket “near mint” to prevent people from being too picky.
That’s awesome and thank you for your very informative post my fiancé and I are going next year for our honeymoon. Now 2 big questions is how was communicating with employees since only speak English? and Also do they take credit cards or should we go to the exchange and change in our usd for japense yen?
Also, how was bringing product back through TSA. I Know you said sealed is seldom or super expensive but if I came accross it. How did you store so they didn’t open it and go through customs?
good catch with the yellow tags. Yes, yellow tags usually mean that a card is damaged.
The thing with yellow tags is that damaged is a very subjective term. So the damage can range from heavily damaged to barely damaged at all. I had some yellow tags where even the staff couldn’t find damage on the card when I asked them. But those were definitely the exception.
So I wouldn’t trust the yellow label in every store.
How was my mandrake experience? It was similar to yellow submarine or book.off. Most of the cards were very overpriced and in bad conditions. But it really depends on the store.
A few stores had a great selection. But those were the stores a bit off the beaten path.
And to be honest, i never really cared about the scale because it seemed a bit random. Everything interesting above a 4 got inspected.
Oh nice, enjoy our trip with your fiancé. Japan is an incredible experience.
About the communication:
You are right, they speak 0 English at all. I know some basic Japanese, so I could communicate most things easily. If I wanted to ask something more sophisticated, I simply used Google Translate. It worked wonders.
Credit cards:
90% of the stores take credit card, but the smaller stores take only cash, so I would also keep a couple of hundreds in cash with me. Especially since Japan is a cash country. So cash will come in handy either way.
TSA:
I am from Europe, so our TSA works a bit different. But I heard from American friends that the US TSA never really bothered with their cards either.
They won’t open your booster packs, and you probably won’t find any boxes that cost less than double the MSRP anyway. But if you end up buying a box anyway, some card shops sell box cases which you can use. That’s what I used and it worked well.
Hope that helps. Let me know if more questions come up
