Hey guys, I have been buying a lot of singles off of eBay of different Japanese single and sealed products for my collection. I ordered around 30 or 40 cards recently and one of my packages was supposed to be here on March 22nd still hasn’t arrived. When I talked to the eBay seller he had said he sent the card out but let me know that Japan has made shipping to US harder now because of more restrictions with Covid. Just curious if anyone else had more issues with buying cards from overseas? We don’t really see much Covid issues nowadays in the us but I guess overseas it’s still more of an issue. But wanted to know how everyone else’s past has been with purchasing Japanese products recently?
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I’m regularly ordering singles from Japan and have not had any issues. The one thing I’ll say is the initial shipping date estimate that eBay gives when you order is not really a good metric to follow. Some sellers ship out immediately an hour after I purchase and others are slower. I’d say cards arrive between 1-3 weeks depending. If I’m bored waiting for cards I go order more 
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What part of the country do you live in?
I’ve not seen a change lately, and have largely been buying snail mail deliveries from JP. I’m on the West coast, so things are better, BUT I have had packages delayed from EU recently. (One got sent back to NY hub… 
and is on it’s way back here… Automated routing at it’s worst! Yipee!
this is synonymous with ebay jp sellers as far as i’m concern. nearly all of them are just drop shippers who will take your money, go and buy the item from mercari or wherever, and then once it arrives, ship it to you.
just set up a buyee account and buy yourself from mercari
also ebay sellers always make up excuses about shipping, blaming covid. i can’t say for sure, but i’m guessing all of the delays on their end and their process of acquiring a suitable card for as cheap as they can to maximize profit.
I’d like to defend JP sellers here. Several, I have been dealing with for years, and I like them a lot. Great service, care, and speed (in dispatching the item at least). There ARE some who are drop shippers or take a while to send off the item, but I rarely deal with them. I DO try to avoid drop shippers tho.
One thing I do to weed-out low-quality sellers is to correspond with at least Japanese greetings and honorary titles. It shows that you’re more thoughtful and they respect that. Plus, it can brighten their day. 
I do it with all foreign sellers, (luckily I speak some IT and ES, I try to speak British too, but the accent is difficult. 
) but it’s a HUGE first step to get better and more genuine service.
Drop shippers are not so invested and rarely respond to this gesture.
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I’ve had plenty of packages take a LONG time and they almost always eventually show up.
Just pay attention to the ebay money back guarantee window and when you get close to the end date of the window you can then follow-up at that time
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order cards so often that you forget when things are supposed to actually arrive 
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I never thought about trying to form a report with sellers beforehand. I definitely have had a few that felt honest and were swift. I bought exclusively from ebay for a few years, but last year finally decided to try buyee and got hooked. Now I place a buyee order about once a month with a bunch of random mercari purchases. There are just so many fun finds on mercari, and typically the price is better. I know this can be offset by the buyee shipping fee at the end, but if you order enough things, it works out in the end. Plus you can find some cool stuff in lots if you’re curious enough to go hunting. Of course, you don’t have the same protections that ebay offers 
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