Hi there,
I was just wondering if anyone had successfully used any Japanese middlemen to source specific rare cards? By this, I mean literally an organisation (or individual) who tracks down specific cards for you for a fee.
I’m looking for some of the rarer Japanese art academy cards but am really struggling to find any of these outside of Japan.
Any help would be most appreciated.
Unfortunately for these and other modern Japanese trophy / rare cards, the difficulty is not in finding the owners, it is finding someone actually willing to sell. For art academies the situation is even worse as the decision lies almost solely with one person. Even for modern trophies, I can find a winner’s blog post about the tournament, tweets, Facebook posts etc. but it doesn’t help me at all if they don’t want to sell.
A prime example of this – one of the rarest cards are the girl version Battle Roads trophies from 2000-2002. There is a winner whose mom had an online Pokémon blog and wrote about attending the tournament at the time. The daughter shared some info about it as well. But the family is not interested in selling and once that is established, it is very rude to contact unsolicited.
Thanks for your response - this is very true.
I am aware that there are a few extra copies that have been sold by individuals who weren’t the owners so was hoping there may be a chance to track down some of these over the next few months or so.