Hey yalls,
So I’ve been extremely slow to the party, but I just finally started browsing Yahoo Japan today. And let me say, wow. I’ve been exclusively buying and selling on ebay for years, and now realize how much opportunity I’ve missed by not branching out to other buying platforms. After browsing Yahoo Japan and pretty much instantly finding cards I’ve been searching for for months and months on ebay, needlessly and meticulously checking every day, I made a Buyee account. For anyone like me, who has avoided other buying platforms, or isn’t sure about trying out another platform, I urge you to at least look into Buyee. It acts as a middleman so you can buy direct from auctions on Yahoo Japan, Mercari, and a bunch of other Japanese auction sites and stores. You can link your Paypal directly to Buyee and make the purchases that way. It does a fairly good job at the Japanese to English translations for pages as well. I’m aware that there are plenty of services like this, but Buyee is the one I feel comfortable with. Anyways, just wanted to put this PSA out there for anyone hesitant to venture outside of ebay. There are lots of other opportunites! Just do your research and decide whether you’re comfortable taking the plunge. And of course, watch out for those scammers! Buyee even has some buying insurance you can add onto your purchases, but I’m not at all familiar with how effective it is. From what I can gather, buying from Japan can be risky, so stay sharp!
Want to add that Buyee charges about $20 to ship to the USA. My one and only time using Buyee turned a $4 card into $9 for their service, which is what I was expecting. Then turned into $29 when I was hit with the unexpected shipping charge. Its all on their main website, but I didn’t read the fine details.
Just a note for future users. Great service, but pricey for cheap cards.
That’s why you consolidate lol. $20 for 1 card? Hurts. $20 for 15 cards? Take that every day
Buyee is best when you can package multiple purchases into a single box shipped back to you. I think they cap at 200,000 yen worth of items per box. You can ship more expensive items than that, but you might get hit with some import fees once it arrives in the USA.
SHHHH… Don’t tell anyone 
! I would suggest checking out Mercari Japan as well when using Buyee. I personally use ZenMarket because they don’t require CC, nor a linked PayPal or confirmation of identity (the downside is for the first few packages you need to prepay funds before bidding/buying). Buying from Japan really isn’t as hard as I first imagined, and I suggest anyone who regularly buys Japanese singles to give it a try. Just make sure you read things carefully and start with a few inexpensive things.
Has anyone made a new account to get coupons for new users? Sometimes they have 5000yen off shipping for new users. I’ve seen on reddit people anecdotally say that it’s worked for them, but the fine print says that if they catch people using multiple accounts they’ll delete your account or something. Can I just use a new account and new payment method? Or would I have to use a diff address and all new info?
@aritafan I made mine today and I’m only seeing coupons for 3 different, specific stores as a promotion for the free Buyee service
Yea that’s all I have as well. Occasionally they’ll do a one time use 500 yen off international shipping or something like that, or no service fee for Yahoo or Mercari.
Little side tip for anyone exploring these Japanese marketplaces: use a translator and search for things in kanji. This seems obvious I guess, but I just discovered it haha. For instance, instead of searching Girafarig, I used キリンリキ and got WAAAYYY better results.
One thing to be aware of when using any of the non-private middleman services is that some sellers ban them from bidding on their auctions.
As a Yahoo Japan seller, I’m mostly fine dealing with Buyee. Zenmarket, on the other hand, is one that I tend to ban more often than not, because they have been very unreliable when it comes to making timely payments and are very poor at communicating.
Another issue is that these services handle thousands of accounts, and so it’s not uncommon for multiple accounts to be bidding on a single auction. It resembles shill-bidding, except it’s kosher. This is great for sellers, but potentially terrible for buyers.
That’s weird, because this is my Mercari homepage:
edit: maybe you have to click on it and use a signup link.
The Japan market has changed and I feel that pricing for japanese cards has gone dramatically up and wrong.
Strange things I find better deal for japanese cards on ebay us than buyee.
In addition to that buyee protection is close to zero. You have to read the small print, they will not apply inspection if your order contains more than 25 cards/items which basically exclude lots so do avoid then on yahoo japan, this is buyee feedback in case you received either a wrong item or extremely damaged item even if you paid for inspection:’
“Under Buyee’s terms of service, we are unable to check each of the items individually if the items in a package are
more than 25 items. Therefore, we regret to inform you that we are not able to accept the request for compensation
in your mentioned situations.”
As said not a good time to buy on the japanese market using proxy service such as buyee for one simple reason:
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pricing for japanese sealed products are collapsing in either amazon, or market like stockx, TCGplayer etc… as supply has shoot up due to heavy reprint from pokemon, disappearance of scalpers, and most importantly the demand shrinking
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Yahoo japan through buyee does not work like ebay or pwcc: not mentioning shield bidding as a favorite mechanic there, but the big difference if the fact that even you did not win an auction, you may end up winning it
, because the seller may decide not to sell it to the winner and hand pick the winner… just imagine if you combine that with shield bidding… so newbies be aware or just avoid buyee/yahoo japan auction which is plentiful of scammers with no to little protection from buyee
Honestly if you are looking for gem, it probably won’t be bought in mercari or Japan auction through buyee, we are not in 2018 or earlier … markets have adjusted so you will probably get low quality or just get scammed.
So get real and spent you money and time wisely, avoid intermediaries of intermediaries (a chain of buyers that just inflate prices toward the end users). There are plenty of options on the US market and be wise.
a long post as the original post seemed to be like almost sponsorship from buyee as they are aggressively doing through all youtube influencers…
Your vendetta with the Japanese marketplaces is odd.
It is great, but be prepared to be scammed a few times while you get the hang of buying in Japan. If you know how to buy effectively, there are plenty deals to be found.
But deals are found everywhere, you have to be risk tolerant to enjoy buying in Japan in comparison to ebay.
@humbleon No sponsorship here. I was literally just excited to try something new and found what I thought was a good outlet for it. It sounds as though you’ve been burned in the past using middlemen, and I’m sorry to hear that. I’m over here bidding on Giraffes that are less than like 5 USD each and I can’t find elsewhere, so I think I’ll be good haha. I appreciate the heads up and am hoping to have better experiences than you have.
@aritafan I actually just won an auction on Buyee and now have the free international shipping coupon available to me. It looks to only be usable through Mercari and is valid for approx a month. So maybe you have to actually complete a purchase first before the offer is available?
As others have noted, buyee can be awesome, but it’s not for the faint of heart. There is so much that goes into learning what listings/sellers are good and what is a scam. With zero buyer protection it’s super important to be confident in what you’re bidding on. The additional fees are also very important to calculate, for many newer cards I often find it substantially cheaper to buy from eBay rather than paying the middleman fee, domestic shipping fee, and international shipping fee.
The thing I’ve found Buyee most useful for is for obtaining Japanese cards that are very challenging to find on western sites.
maybe they’re secretly trying to keep everyone away from buyee 
Agreed, I would also add that you should add a risk % to everything you are buying (e.g 20% cost to every item), so that when things go wrong, the whole cost/benefit calculation becomes decent.