A Minor Quibble with the Festering Cesspool of Racism that is Japan's Yahoo Auctions

Rant time.  Sorry, but I'm pissed.

I was cruising Yahoo Auctions earlier today and was about to put a bid in on a Famicom game from this seller by the name of gs76u87o.  

Then I stopped because I wasn't allowed to.  Not because I have any problems with my feedback.  Not because I couldn't pay promptly.  Not because of anything I had done or would do.

The reason I couldn't put a bid in on the game was because gs76u87o is a piece of racist garbage.

If you can read Japanese and take a look at any of his listings, he openly states that he won't deal with foreigners.  Note that the language makes it clear that he isn't referring to people living overseas - which would be OK since most sellers only ship within Japan for a variety of legitimate reasons.  No, he means anyone who is not ethnically Japanese he won't deal with regardless of where they live.

While not in the majority, it is disturbingly common to find this sort of racism being openly displayed by sellers on Yahoo Auctions.  It probably doesn't get commented on much since these things are always written in Japanese so most foreigners don't notice and it has less visceral impact than seeing "Japanese people only" written in English..   

It pisses me off that Yahoo Japan - a major company if there ever was one - allows this open type of racial discrimination to go on.  If an Ebay seller put up a condition saying "Only white people can bid on my stuff, if I find out you aren't white, I will leave negative feedback and blacklist you" you can imagine the shitstorm that would happen.  That guy would not have an Ebay account for long.  On Yahoo Auctions though it is totally OK and good luck trying to complain about it.

This sort of shit is, while not an everyday thing, something that foreign residents of Japan do have to put up with in various situations.  The only time it ever really causes a stir is when the perpetrators make the mistake of expressing their racism in English - as was the case with the incident in the photo at the top of this page (which occurred at a pro soccer game - the team actually allowed that banner to be hung in the stadium for the duration of the game and were only punished by the league after an outcry following the photo showing up online). 

So anyway, what was my point?  Fuck you  gs76u87o I guess is obvious, but also fuck you Yahoo Japan for allowing this shit to exist on your service that I AM FUCKING PAYING YOU TO PROVIDE TO ME and have a LEGITIMATE EXPECTATION THAT MY ETHNICITY WILL NOT PRECLUDE ME FROM FUCKING USING IT.

Sorry for the all caps, but that really needed to be emphasized.

Some Interesting Famicom Price Information: 88 Games Worth More than 5000 Yen

 As I mentioned in my last post, a seller on Yahoo Auctions has been putting up an amazing collection of CIB Famicom games with low starting bids.  In fact he seems to be putting an almost complete set (over 1,000 games according to him and he has put up 600 different ones so far) - all CIB and all in nice condition.

Since an opportunity like this only comes once in a while, I thought this would provide a useful bit of information to record - just how much are all of these games, being auctioned at (almost) the same time in almost the same condition by the same guy going for?

While one sale isn`t enough information to form the basis for a price guide, at least this will give us a hint of what these games are roughly worth - virtually all the games got a fair amount of bidding so we know there weren`t any expensive ones going for unrealistically low prices, while at the same time the low starting bids meant no unrealistically high prices set by the seller (though of course that doesn`t mean everyone was bidding rationally).

The seller hasn`t quite been selling them all at once, in the first round he auctioned off 300 (and has a second round of 300 which will finish next week).  The first round finished last night and these are the games which sold for over 5000 yen, which accounted for 88 out of the 300.  I cut them off at 5000 yen partly to save myself some time and partly because the more expensive ones, having gotten the most bids and most attention from buyers, probably went for prices closer to their actual value.

I have listed these below, in order from most to least expensive.  The values are in Yen and do not include shipping (which would have added 164 or 510 yen depending on the method of shipping chosen).  To get a rough idea of the value in US $, the exchange rate at the time of the auction was about 115 Yen to the Dollar.

All games are CIB and, while I didn`t closely look at all the pictures, the ones I did inspect were all in very good condition.  Some of them were sold as new or never used, these are marked with `New` after the price.

There are a few interesting things.  The most expensive game was Summer Carnival Recca at 104800 yen, almost one thousand dollars.  Battle Formula, another rarity, was a close second and the only other one to breach the 100,000 Yen barrier.  Taking third place was a game I had never heard of for the Datach called Battle Rush, which apparently is also quite hard to find CIB.  Kung Fu (the scarce variant of Spartan X), Snow Bros and Lickle all got over 50,000, which isn`t surprising as they are all quite hard to find.

One game that did surprise me was #10, Double Dragon which sold for a whopping 36100 Yen.  That is a great game but by no means is it rare (though CIB copies in nice shape are a bit hard to come by).  It seems totally out of place wedged in between Adventure Island 4 and Moon Crystal, both of which are extremely hard to find.  I have seen slightly worn copies selling at Mandarake for about 1/10th that price.

There are a few other super common games that made the list - Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo, Kakefu Kun and Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu seem completely out of place on a valuable game list but they were all new which might explain it (though I still think they went for too much). Mitsume ga Toru, a hard to find and very popular game, also seems out of place right next to Milon no Daibouken, which is a good game but extremely common.

There don`t seem to have been any steals among the games on this list (the ones that went under 5,000 yen were mostly unsurprising too).  Kage and Taiku no Gen San seem a bit lower on the list than I think they deserve, but the prices paid for them aren`t much different from what they go for in shops.

I`ll update this again next week when round 2 of the sale finishes.

Summer Carnival 92 Recca	104800
Battle Formula	101100
Battle Rush (Datach)	81550
Kung Fu	61000
Snow Bros	55300
Lickle	50111
Guevara	45100
Gimmick!	44100
Adventure Island 4	39000	New
Double Dragon	36100
Moon Crystal	34700
Chip and Dale's Adventure	32700
Banana Oushi Daibouken	32100	New
Bubble Bobble 2	30200
Contra	29100
Gold Punch Out	28500
Yu Yu Hakusho (Datach)	25500
Magical Doropie	22500
Doki Doki Yuenchi	21500
AnpanMan no Hiragana Daisuki	20500
Chip and Dale's Adventure 2	20100
Rockman	18600
Donald Land	18500
Nekketsu Street Baseketball	18060
Spartan X 2	16015
Kyoro Chan Land	15700
Taiku no Gen San 2	15200
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2	14700	New
Spelunker (with POP)	14500
The Empire Strikes Back	14300
Kakefu Kun	13600	New
Final Mission	13200
Sword Master	13111	New
Star Wars (Victor)	13060
Bucky O'Hare	13001
Family School	12600
Mike Tyson Punch Out	12200
Super Contra	12100
Choujin Sentai Jetman	12050	New
Bazolda	11600
Fushigi no Umi no Nadia	11200
Dragon Ball Shinryuu no Nazo	11166	New
Adventures of Lolo 2	11100
Gekitotsu Macho Man	11015	New
Rockman 2	10600
Bomber Man	10600	New
Idol Hakkenden	10550
Nakayoshi to Isshou	10500
Chaos World	10000
Mitsume ga Toru	10000
Milon no Daibouken	9649	New
Joust	9500
Mighty Final Fight	9050	New
Kage	8851
Kawa no Nushu Tsuri	8450	New
Hoshi wo Miru Hito	8000
Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru	7850
Bikkuriman World	7750	New
Popeye (silver box)	7501
Rockboard	7250	New
Sqoon	7150	New
Tatakai no Banka	7150
Mother	7150
Donkey Kong Jr Math	7050
Rokdenashi Blues	6850
Saint Seya Goukin Densetsu	6511
Moai Kun	6449	New
Taiku no Gen San	6350
Chiki Chiki Machine	6265
Ninja Ryukenden	6252
Moeru Onisan	6250
Robocop 2	6150
Max Warrior	6150	New
Mickey Mouse 3 Yume Fusen	6100	New
Dragon Slayer	6099
Balloon Fight	6050
Zelda no Densetsu	6050
Tom and Jerry	5761
Space Hunter	5750
Rockman 6	5750
Ninja Ryukenden 3	5600	New
Mario Bros (silver box)	5510
Robocop	5350
Bio Senshi Dan	5250	New
Red Arima 2	5250	New
Tashiro Masashi Princess ga Ippai	5000
Ushi Ototora	5000

Yahoo Auctions: Somebody auctioning off an entire CIB collection of Famicom carts?

I was browsing through the Famicom listings on Yahoo Auctions yesterday when I noticed one seller, mad-masax, was without much fanfare putting up what looks like it may be one of the most impressive Famicom sales ever.

Currently he has 280 listings, each of them a different CIB Famicom game with a starting bid of 300 yen (about $3). The selection he has so far is crazy, including some of the most sought after, hard to find titles out there - Battle Formula, Lickle, Moon Crystal, Gimmick, Recca, Snow Bros, Adventure Island 4, Kung Fu, Magical Doropie, etc etc.  All CIB and all look like they are in (or near) top condition.

The thing that really teases me is that in the description he says he is planning to auction off a little over 1000 different games.  Given that there are only 1051 (give or take) official Famicom carts out there, and also given the insane quantity of rarities he already has listed, this may mean that this seller is breaking up an entire, complete set of Famicom carts - all CIB!  I should note that the seller doesn`t actually claim to be selling a complete set, but it looks like he might have one (or something very close to it).

A couple of years ago somebody did something similar on Ebay, where they received 1 million Euros for the whole collection (albeit that collection included some other consoles as well so it was quite a bit bigger and must go down as the most impressive Famicom sale ever). Other than that though, I`ve never seen a collection as impressive of this being sold off all at once.  Definitely something worth watching if you are curious about what CIB Famicom rarities will go for, Battle Formula is currently the leader in the bidding at a little over 50,000 yen.

(note - the photo at the top of this post isn`t from the auction, but from my own meagre CIB collection! To see what he has, click on the link above, its way more impressive).

Getting Ripped Off on Yahoo Japan Auctions: Buyer Beware

OK, got me some complaining to do and since I have a blog, I`m going to do it here.  

I finally got ripped off in an online transaction!  It happened on Yahoo Auctions.  It was kind of a big purchase so I`m going to whine a bit about it in a transparent bid for sympathy.

I also thought this would be a useful excuse to do a post about something that has sort of been in the back of my mind for a while – the complete lack of buyer protection on Yahoo Auctions.  So fear not, this post will not be an entirely narcissistic exercise in complaining about first world problems.

Now, getting ripped off in any deal always sucks, but I`m going to do something I don`t normally do here and actually heap some praise on Ebay and Paypal for a change.  I`ve been an active Ebay user for a few years now (as a buyer) and in the few instances where I`ve had a complaint about a transaction I have always been able to get it resolved to my satisfaction.  A couple of times I have received an item that was either damaged or not as described and both times the seller gave me a refund almost within minutes of me contacting them with my complaint.

I think the main reason Ebay sellers are so accommodating is that both Ebay and Paypal have pretty effective dispute resolution mechanisms that provide them with an incentive to act that way.  If they ignore a complaint not only will they get negative feedback, but they also run the risk of Paypal forcing them to refund the buyer`s money.  Those are some pretty powerful tools and, while not perfect, I think they do heighten the overall trustworthiness of Ebay as a marketplace.  The downside of course is the fees they charge, but that is another story.

On Yahoo Auctions it is a completely different story, which I can illustrate by doing a little complaining here.  Basically what happened was this.  A few days ago I was looking for an AV Famicom console only (ie no controllers, cables, etc).  I found one with a BIN price that, with shipping, would set me back about $60.  This was a pretty high price for just a loose console without anything else, but I needed one on short notice so I decided to go for it. It was from a seller I had done business with in the past without problems so I let my guard down and just hit the BIN button, paid for it and waited. And it came.

When I opened it I noticed right away something was wrong.  It was dirty, which was OK since I had been able to see that in the photo.  What wasn`t visible in the photo was the fact that on the back of the console there was a big chunk of the plastic that had broken off and was nowhere to be found.  Furthermore when I plugged it in I found that it was dead to the world.  No amount of fiddling around would bring it to life: the Famicom was a paperweight.

I immediately got out my laptop and double checked the listing.  It did not say anything about it being broken or mention the damage on the back and the price it was being sold at certainly suggested it was a working one.  On the other hand it did not say that it had been tested and the dealer`s boilerplate language said `I sell old stuff, I do not guarantee their condition – judge for yourself by what is in the photo.`  Oh, what a fool I had been....

No kidding Mr. T, no kidding.  I kind of realized that I was screwed right there but I thought I would send him a message just to see what, if anything, he would do.  As a seller myself I have had a couple of games that I sold get broken in transit and both times I either gave a full refund or sent a replacement at my expense, so I thought at the very least he might apologize or offer at least a partial refund.  All I said in the message was that the Famicom was not working and that there was a broken part on the back that had not been visible in the photo.

Shortly thereafter I got what I sort of expected to receive – a tersely worded reply saying that I should have read the fine print more carefully.  About the broken part he said it was my fault for not having asked him before making the purchase if there was anything broken which was not visible in the photo.  About the Famicom not working he simply said tough luck, it wasn`t his problem.

Even though I had kind of expected it, the message was a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bull to me.  I went from calm to this in about 0.00001 seconds:

I immediately started to familiarize myself with Yahoo Auctions` dispute resolution process in order to determine how I could make some sort of complaint.  This was an extremely easy and quick task for me to accomplish since it turns out none exists.  Basically the guidelines simply says something to the effect of  “Yahoo Auctions does not get involved in disputes between buyers and sellers.  Please just work it out for yourselves…”  (the “…” at the end is actually in the guidelines!)

So in other words if you get ripped off on Yahoo Auctions by an unscrupulous buyer you have no recourse unless the unscrupulous buyer suddenly becomes a nice guy and gives you your money back. 

The only thing you can do is leave negative feedback, and you better believe I left some negative feedback.  I have been very reluctant in the past to give anything less than great feedback to sellers on Yahoo Auctions because in another example of them screwing over buyers, retaliatory negative feedback against buyers is not only the norm, but in fact a much stronger weapon than it is on Ebay (where it is not allowed to begin with).

So I left the guy a negative feedback.  It says

“This guy is selling broken Famicoms.  I feel like I have been scammed, it is really awful.  Everyone please be careful with this guy.”

(ファミコンが動かないものを売っている。 非常に、詐欺に会ったような感じで 最悪である。皆さまお気をつけ下さい。)

Then the retaliation started. First, sellers on Yahoo Auctions have a curious power to “cancel” transactions even on things which have already been sold.  And bazubazu1023 did exactly that.  I would love it if cancelling a transaction meant that the buyer got his money back, but it doesn’t.  All it does is shield the seller from any further communication from you while allowing him to keep your money.   

Then I got the negative feedback, which pissed me off because I had a perfect record up until then.  It says:

“This guy isn’t Japanese, he doesn’t understand anything.  I cannot believe you would ignore what is written and leave such a feedback.  Don’t harass me just because you cannot accept things.  You have been blacklisted, I will not deal with this person anymore.”

(日本の方ではなく文章を理解する事が出来ない方です。記載してある事を理解せずこの様な評価は有り得ません。納得が行かない事を理由に嫌がらせはしないで下さい。ブックリスト入れました。今後一切お取引はありません。)

“Blacklisting” is an option for sellers on Yahoo Auctions, which basically prevents you from bidding on their stuff in the future (which is fine with me).  The unvarnished racism in the feedback was a nice parting touch from a guy who took $60 from and left me with a piece of garbage.

And just to piss me off more, Yahoo Auctions actually allows sellers to not only leave negative feedback on a current transaction but also to retroactively recall positive feedback they had left for transactions in the past which have nothing to do with the current one, so my overall score actually went down by two instead of one (I had bought some games from him about a month ago).  It doesn`t work both ways though - he gets to keep the positive feedback I had left him on that transaction. 

Anyway, the moral to the story is of course buyer beware, especially on Yahoo Auctions.  The system really is out of whack there, to the point that a buyer who has been ripped off not only has no way of making any sort of claim, but can`t even leave negative feedback without suffering reputational consequences of their own. 

Warehouse Find? An Unopened Case of Famicom Choujin Ultra Baseball!

Just a couple of weeks after complaining about how Yahoo Auctions no longer has any deals I find myself in the awkward position of having a deal that I scored on Yahoo Auctions to report.

My score was the following box, full of the above pictured copies of Choujin Ultra Baseball!!

This is a fully intact factory case of Choujin Ultra baseball containing 20 brand new copies of the game.  Back in 1989 when this game came out this is what the clerks at Japan`s department stores pulled the games out of when they put them on the shelf.

It is exceedingly rare to find intact cases of Famicom games like this, I suspect that someone must have found a few gathering dust in a back corner of some store`s warehouse because cases of a few games have popped up on both Yahoo Auctions and even Ebay recently.  Anybody fancy a case of Super Chinese 2?  300$ on Ebay right now!

Anyway, open that case up and presto!  20 beauties all lined up in a row.

It is cool to have these because you can line the individual boxes up to recreate a 1980s store display atmosphere in the comfort of your own living room, like so:

The seller I got this off of actually had cases of 3 or 4 other titles, like Super Chinese 3 and Fighting Wars which I could have chosen from.  I zeroed in on Choujin Ultra Baseball though.  If it had been any other baseball title - or sports title for that matter - I probably would have gone for Super Chinese 3 instead.  But as I wrote about in a post a couple of years ago I absolutely love the cover art on Choujin Ultra Baseball.  I think it is far and away the best cover art on any sports game ever made - the colors are fantastic and it has a kind of pop art look to it which just really appeals to me.  10 Yard Fight is the only sports game I can think of which gives this one a run for its money.  Also just look how determined that batter looks

The case itself is also pretty neat.  It is of course just a cardboard box, but in addition to the cool FF Famicom Family logo on the top it also has the game logo on the side.

I am really curious about how this (and the other games which have unopened cases showing up on auction sites) survived so long intact.  There are a couple of things that puzzle me.  I would have expected that any dead stock Famicom cases would have been either: 1) games which there are a ton of (like Family Stadium or something) which they may have produced too many of, or 2) games released late in the Famicom`s lifetime when the system`s popularity was plummeting as the next generation Super Famicom took over the market.

Choujin Ultra Baseball doesn`t really fit into either of these categories though.  It wasn`t an overproduced game - loose carts pop up in game shops here and there but I`ve never seen them in bulk like with other Famicom baseball games.  Also it was released in 1989, a year before the Super Famicom came out and when the Famicom was still the king of the consoles in Japan.  It is a bit of a mystery.  I assume, as the title of this post suggests, that it was part of a warehouse find that somebody stumbled across.

Anyway, it is kind of a neat thing and I`m not exactly sure what I will do with it.  I definitely will NOT be breaking it up.  This sort of thing just demands that it be kept together - the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts.  Still, what do you do with 20 copies of the same game?  I mean, other than playing 1980s Japanese department store with them.

The Yahoo Auction Price Explosion: Woe is me

It has been a little over a year since I first started buying Famicom games on Yahoo Auctions.  It was so awesome at first: tons of Famicom games selling for bargain prices.

In the past nine months or so Yahoo Auction has gone from being a good place to buy cheap Famicom stuff to....a good place to buy much much less cheap Famicom stuff.

As someone who follows the auctions there pretty closely I can say that prices for Famicom lots have increased by at least 50% over the course of 2013.  I still enter bids on stuff once a week or so but I haven`t actually won - or even come close to winning - an auction in months despite the fact that I have increased my maximum bidding strategy from what it was last year (in 2012 I would win about half the auctions I put serious bids on).  Every time a decent lot of Famicom carts comes up there are tons of people bidding for it and the prices are going through the roof.

The main explanation  for this would seem to be the exchange rate.  The Japanese yen has lost about 25% of its value against the dollar over the same time period, meaning that it is that much cheaper for overseas buyers bidding through proxies to buy Famicom stuff priced in Yen.

The problem with that is the exchange rate change (25%) can only account for about half of the overall increase in prices (about 50%), which leaves the question of where the other half came from.

My theory on that is that prices last year were just insanely cheap because there were fewer overseas buyers bidding on stuff.  With the increased number of bidders entering the market as a result of the lower yen competition for the stuff available has also increased and these bidders have forced the prices up well past the exchange rate difference.

This kind of sucks for me since my salary is in Yen, meaning that the lowered exchange rate didn`t increase my purchasing power by 25% like it did for overseas buyers.  I am forced to recall with rose tinted lenses those glory days of 2012 when I went on my first Yahoo Auction buying binge.....oh how glorious it was!

Combined with the fact that I moved last year and have no retro game stores near my new place this means that my Famicom well has more or less run dry.  I bought tons of Famicom and other retro game stuff last year but to date this year I have purchased exactly three games which altogether cost less than 1500 yen (about 15$), which works out to less than 2$ a month.

I know all you Famicom collectors in the US will hate me for saying this but.....I really hope the Yen goes up in value again soon :)

Crisis Force for the Famicom: Somebody got a Bargain

As I have alluded to in previous posts, I have been doing a lot of shopping on Yahoo Auctions recently. I`ve been buying mainly stuff in larger lots since the per-cart cost is pretty cheap when you do that. The only downside being that you end up with a lot of mahjong games.

Usually the lots I bid on will have a crown jewel or two that is what I am mainly after. One lot I got recently had the above CIB copy of Crisis Force as its piece de resistance.

Crisis Force is a shoot-em up developed by Konami. It is a massively popular game among Famicom collectors for three reasons. First, it was only released in Japan. Second, it is awesome. Third, since it came out towards the end of the Famicom`s lifetime they didn`t sell too many, making it, if not super-rare, at least hard to come by.

I already had a loose copy, but I thought a CIB one for a good price would make a nice addition to my collection so I got it. I did get a pretty good deal on it, but when I received it I discovered that someone else at one point had gotten an even better deal on it:
Its a little annoying when good games have price tags right on their precious cardboard boxes like that. What makes this most interesting though is the price, 380 yen is only about 5$.

Just for comparison, I did a quick Ebay search. The cheapest CIB copy of Crisis Force I could find had a BIN price of $128.88. The cheapest loose copy I could find had a starting bid of $49. It is, in other words, one of the more expensive Famicom games out there. Not quite gold Punch Out expensive but getting close.

Unfortunately the price tag doesn`t have the store`s name on it as I would love to go there for some browsing if this is what they price things at. In all likelihood though this price tag is probably 15 years old and predates the development of a collector market for this game. Mandarake in town for example has a CIB copy going for about 80$, so it is usually an expensive game in Japan too (though not quite as expensive as Ebay).

Precious Namcot games.....Precious....

Some new `pieces` for my collection: the first four games Namcot released for the Famicom complete in box!
I`ve been wanting to get a set of the first 18 Namcot releases (they are numbered) complete in box ever since Bryan over on the Gay Gamer picked up a few of them a couple years back, the pictures he put up just knocked me out. I love the boxes on these, they hit all the right buttons for me: small, cardboard, colorful and with great, evocative imagery on the front.

I already had a couple from this series CIB but they are in the kind of `B-grade` level of games - stuff like Star Luster and Pro Wrestling. These ones however include Pac Man, the one I wanted the most! YES!

I found these on Yahoo Auction in part of a larger lot of boxed games. They set me back quite a bit, but I was massively impressed when I received them. Most of the other games in the lot were in beat up condition but these Namco ones are like new:
They only have some tiny wear on the flaps but other than that they are in perfect condition and look like they could have come directly off a department store shelf from 1984. The photos in the auction weren`t close up so I wasn`t expecting them to be this nice. In fact I was in a bit of a panic when I realized how beautiful they were as these are way too good to just casually toss on a random shelf with the rest of my games where they will get all wrinkled up (what I normally do with games). I had to empty out a plastic bin to put them in for safe keeping.

So my collection now has some showy mint stuff in it. I will not be putting these into hard plastic containers for disply or anything, but I will be keeping them in that plastic bin until I find some safe way of storing them.

Next on my wantlist for this series are Battle City, Warpman, Sky Kid and Burger Time - all of which have awesome cover art. And are probably going to cost me a bit of $$.

Losing my Yahoo Japan Auction Virginity: Better than Losing my Actual Virginity

I finally did it. After years of procrastinating the closure of Omocha Souko finally forced my hand: I got myself a Yahoo Japan Auctions account.

The fact that I no longer have a decent Famicom store nearby has been a bit of a bummer. If I want games I now have to travel long distances to get to the nearest shops, which can be a brutally antagonizing experience if, upon arrival, you find that the shop doesn`t have anything that you want (which seems to be happening more and more these days). When you, say, ride your bike for nearly an hour to that Hard Off location way out in the suburbs only to find boxes full of stuff like this:
It can be quite disheartening (fellow Hard Off junk bin lurkers nod in agreement).

So I`ve been faced with the hard reality that if I want to continue my collecting at its previous Omocha-Souko induced pace (which is like collecting Famicom stuff on Jose Canseco levels of steroids) I would need to do something drastic. That something was getting off my ass and making a serious effort to figure out how to use Yahoo Auctions.

Ebay is not a big thing in Japan, Yahoo is the dominant player for online auctions over here. The basics are the same, but there are some details that are different. Obviously it is all in Japanese. Also you have to pay to become a full `premium` member, 346 yen (about 5$) a month. You can sign up for a regular account free of charge but you are limited to bidding on stuff under 5000 yen, meaning that even if you only buy one thing over that a month it is probably worth it to get the premium account, which I did.


I have been spending a ton of time on there because there is just so much Famicom stuff, a lot of it selling for quite reasonable prices, it is like having Mandarake in my living room. Like the title says, this has been way better than losing my actual virginity. Well, actually it has been quite similar in some ways - lots of awkward fumbling around at first until I familiarized myself with all the accepted protocols, the instillment of a conviction that this is an activity I would like to engage in on a regular basis, conflicted emotional responses and so on. In other ways though it is quite different: there is very little chance that my Yahoo Auction account will end in a messy break up that results in me getting beaten with an umbrella for example.

I signed up about a week ago and I`ve already spent way more than I can afford on stuff. Like, no kidding, I have bought about 600 Famicom games this week. I need help, I just cannot stop bidding on stuff! Argh!

Well, I should get some perspective here. It is good but its got its downsides too. Like Ebay the prices are hit and miss, people price gouge here too. But the auction stuff (rather than the Buy it Now stuff) can go for pretty decent prices, at least if you buy in large lots.

The upsides I think outweigh the downsides. Because almost everyone uses Japan Post transfers for payment there is no 3.9% paypal fee to deal with like on Ebay. Shipping is crazy efficient and cheap too, I`ve already started receiving stuff (like the box at the top of this page) that I only won 2 or 3 days ago.

And getting a box full of 100 Famicom carts in the mail is friggin` great.

Sniping also seems to be less of a problem as I found in one competetive auction that I eventually won. If someone outbids you at the last minute they extend the auction for a few minutes so you can respond (as can the other guy). I would have been sniped on one lot had it been on Ebay but after upping our bids by about a thousand yen I eventually won it.

Anyway, I`m going to be doing some posts about my new acquisitions because I`ve gotten some cool collection additions either here or on the way!