"What the hell is SMJ and what does it have to do with this incredibly great Segata Sanshiro sticker sheet to the left?", you might think. I guess most of you haven't heard about SMJ yet, that's why I want to introduce you to it. The Shopping Mall Japan is an incredibly great service, who enables everyone to shop in Japan. That does include weird japanese websites, but more importantly the japanese auction site Yahoo Auctions Japan. Yes. Yahoo Auctions is the place to be, when you want rare or semi-rare Sega Saturn stuff just like the great Segata Sanshiro sticker sheet you are seeing on the left.It works like this: You register yourself a free account at SMJ. Then you can enter an auction ID from Yahoo Auctions and the desired maximum bid amount and they'll bid for you. In realtime and automatically. Once the auction is won (or lost) you'll get a notification and the seller will ship the item to the SMJ offices in Japan. Then they'll redirect the stuff right to you. And well, yes, there is a snag in it. It's quite an expensive service. The SMJ stuff wants to earn some money through this service, so naturally they want some fees from you. They range from 5 USD for auctions with a max. price of 2000 Yen up to 12 USD for auctions ranging from 4000 - 10000 Yen. Additionally they take 2.50 USD wire transfer fee. Of course you also pay the shipping within Japan as well as the shipping to your home country! So my advise is to only buy things there, which you can't get elsewhere and which you really, really want. Small and cheap items like the Segata Sanshiro stickers can get up to 200 % in price with all the fees.
Personally I prefer to pay those fees than don't having those great items at all. And Yahoo Japan does have some great items. Along with the stickers I also bought a Segata Sanshiro VHS tape with all his TV Commercials on it! Now isn't that great? I'll try to rip it to DVD then, so that I can finally enjoy the TV spots on my actual TV set in great quality. Woo yay! And of course there's more on Yahoo Auctions. Segata Sanshiro Book, Music CD, telephone cards and action figures! Damn, I have to buy everything! :D So, check out their page, they have explanations for just everything you want to know and I guess I wrote enough, plain boring text already. Next time I'll post more pictures, I promise!
4 comments:
Yet more outstanding and invaluable information dear elend! How do you keep up such quality posts? Fantastic stuff! Now I am very interested in the Segata Action figures... I might just have to invest!
On a side note, I'm interested in getting a Dreamcast Scene t-shirt. You knows those guys don't you? It's not obvious from the website how you get one... Can you help a brother out? Cheers!!!
Shopping Mall Japan? Now that's interesting. Not that I'm interested in it myself, my budget can't allow such things, but for the collector's out there with enough coin to spend it looks like an invaluable resource. Top find!
Well, also think about the very weak USD! 140 USD are a mere 88 EUR, which is really great. I remember the times, where I had to pay twice for a single Dollar.
It's great indeed! I'm about to buy a Dreamcast VGA box from Racketboy that, with shipping, will cost about 27 USD, which is something like 17 EUR nowadays.
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