One of the great things about buying retro video games/consoles from Japan is that you can score some pretty amazing deals. Comparable items bought here in the US tend to command a premium over the same product sold in Japan. One of the best places to purchase these retro goodies is Yahoo! Auctions Japan, however, navigating as well as actually going through with the transaction is quite challenging given the language barrier. And if you don’t have a Japanese address it can actually be nearly impossible to order anything.
This is were a proxy shopping service comes in handy. Now there are several there proxy services that allow you to purchase items from online Japanese retailers, but the one I’ve had the most experience with is Sendico. I’ve been using them for years and recently they updated their website with a few new features that I cover in my video. Sendico’s website has made searching and purchasing items from Yahoo! Auctions (as well as Mercari and Rakuten) very easy. They have integrated these online retailers into their own website to facilitate the shopping experience which includes translating everything into english, so sifting though listings is made quite a bit easier.
My video walks you though the process of how to find, bid, and ship products using Sendico. Additionally, Sendico is not just limited to Yahoo! Auctions Japan. You can also shop on just about any Japanese website that sells stuff using their “Order Form” tool. This is a great resource if there’s a Japanese website you’d like to shop at.
Now some things to keep in mind is that there are a few fees that you will incur when using this service. Basically for each auction that you win, you will incur a ¥500 fee which is only a few dollars. However, if you order multiple items from a single store and it get’s shipped to Sendico in a single box, you will only incur one ¥500 fee vice a fee per item. Think of the fee as being applied on a per “parcel” basis, not a per “item” basis. Additionally, you will also need to pay “inland” shipping, which is the shipping cost of the product within Japan to the Sendico warehouse (sometimes this is free). And lastly you will need to pay for shipping of your product from the Sendico warehouse to your country (some countries will have an import tax or VAT, but typically the United States does not charge a duty on shipments that have a value of ¥200,000 or less). So if you are buying a single item, the fees and internation shipping can actually add up to be quite a bit. Which brings me to the overall strategy of using a proxy shopping service.
The strategy with using a service like Sendico is to purchase many items over a period of time and have them shipped all at once. That way you spread the International shipping cost over many items making the per item shipping cost pretty low. Because Sendico will hold your items in storage for 90 days, this allows you plenty of time to shop around and slowly accumulate items in their warehouse.
Again, savings is achieved though the consolidation of many items into a single package, as well as the typically lower price of retro video games sold in Japan.
Over the years, I’ve been able to get some pretty incredible finds for very good prices. And even today, I still manage to find amazing deals.
For more details on how to use Sendico, definitely check out the video linked above.
Use this link to check out Sendico. Signing up and using this link will give me (Macho Nacho) a small commission: https://sendico.com/referral/MachoNacho (Affiliate Link)
