Most buy boxes from www.amiami.com/eng/
Some have had luck getting singles from tcgrepublic.com/
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Boxes are not a problem in the slightest for me, it’s completing entire sets through singles that seems to get troublesome the longer you wait to actually buy them. With English it seems more like the curve is high prices at the start, then slightly lower prices and higher prices for playable cards followed by huge pricedrops on anything that was previously playable once it rotates out.
For Japanese I’m looking at 2 year old cards and see absurd prices that are higher than the English prices are. Hence my idea that maybe Japanese is less feasible than English for collecting (modern cards and whole binder sets)?
2 factors influence what you’re seeing. The first is print numbers, Japanese sets are not nearly printed to the same level that English sets are, which just makes sense. Usually that leads to issues down the road with card prices, stuff like CP6 boxes have jumped while Evolutions is still dirt cheap. That lack of sheer card numbers means it’s harder to find a specific card you’re looking for and if you do then it’ll likely be priced higher because there’s no competition. Modern English singles sales are pretty much a race to the bottom and you’ll have a fairly well-established price floor. With Japanese it’s harder to get to that, especially because of factor #2 which is the restricted market. The largest card markets for Japanese cards are things like Yahoo Japan and Japanese-exclusive card sites. These markets almost always only ship to Japan. This is where you’ll find prices that are much more well-defined and significantly lower than what you see on eBay. However, you’ll need to use middleman services in order to access these markets, which will charge you a fee to do so. Often even with the fee you can get cards for lower prices, so this is what a lot of Japanese collectors outside of Japan will use.
My best advice here: don’t wait too long to buy cards since the singles dry up fast, use a middleman service to access more cards at lower prices, and don’t assume the eBay prices are the actual market value.
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This is good advice here @sophieexmachina. As to what he already said, the Japanese market doesn’t print to high hell like English. When Ultra Shiny GX came out (Hidden Fates), I remember Scott (Smpratte) saying that his Japanese distributors had to buy back some of his inventory because they dried out in Japan. Ebay has many Japanese seller’s that can get you a decent price, are you talking about a set in particular? I have used Rakuten in the past but you also weigh if it is cheaper for sites like YJapan plus a middleman vice just using another seller/distributor.
I had this saved before but Scott sent a link of Japanese sites to use. Hopefully he’ll chime in. @smpratte.
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I’m no expert, and I have been a long-time lurker here, but I also like collecting Japanese cards. From my recent trip to Japan (came back to California exactly a week ago), here’s what I found out. For Tag Team All Stars, it’s still readily available. Almost every game store I went to still had booster boxes including the Pokémon Centers. Not saying what smpratte said is wrong, but it seems like there’s more supply now. You can even get them on Amazon.co.jp (sometimes cheaper than Amiami). For completing 1-2 year old sets, I would say to go to Japan and buy it. Some stores has a lot of bulk and loose singles for like 10 yen (or ~10 cents). For Dream League, I love the artwork for the character rares, so I set out to buy almost all that I could. Some even went to as low as 50 yen (~50 cents) each. The downside is that they limit 4 of the same cards per customer. One thing I also saw is that people are always selling their collection. I went to multiple Mandarake’s, and they are always sorting pokémon cards. Even when I went to the same shop again a couple days later, those cards are still behind the counter and not for sale yet. From what I see on the markets, if you’re looking to complete a set, Japan is the way to go. On eBay, the sets are older, so the sellers don’t really care about them. They can list it for higher prices since they are not in a rush to sell it. In Japan, they don’t care either, but so many people don’t care that they just sell it as bulk. A middleman has to make money somehow and may have minimum fees, so it may depend on what you’re getting that may make it worth it. It also depends on what you’re buying. I’ve bought PSA 10 graded crystals, shinings, and gold stars on eBay cheaper than the raw cards in Japan or maybe just a little more expensive. Some lower-end raw crystal cards were about ~$180USD in Japan. On eBay, if you wait, it can be had in PSA 10 for under $250. To me, it’s worth paying extra because mint cards of those eras are hard to find now in Japan. Sorry for such a long message…
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I mostly deal with Japanese cards and would give you contrary advice to some of what has been mentioned above.
For exclusive sets like CP6, definitely buy early before they dry up.
For sets that are currently in standard and are usually readily available, buy all cards that dont see play a couple of months after release and for the ones that see play, wait for them to either rotate or fall off the meta.
A good example would be tapu lele which was ÂŁ40+ in Japan a couple of years ago, and is now dirt cheap because it rotated out
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I wholly agree with you and can confirm the above from my own experience. There was a rotation in Japan quite recently and as a result thereof certain cards have dropped in price quite a lot (examples are Ditto and Tapu Koko prism star).
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