Best place to buy foreign cards?

[abraxas]

I want to buy more Japanese foils in the foreseeable future, and eBay is sort of hit-or-miss most of the time. What are some good resources for buying/trading for Japanese foils?

I can't seem to find the search field on the Japanese eBay site either, so that doesn't help me either.

[Gocho]

Where are you from?

Magiccardmarket lets you filter by language and Foil, so you can buy only Japanese Foils, but I suppose that some site in Japan would be better.

[abraxas]

I'm from the U.S. I live in Southern California

[dontbiteitholmes]

Japanese Ebay is a joke. Everyone in Japan uses Yahoo.jp auctions. Forget about getting anything mailed directly to you from Japan, you would have to use a service that specializes in that sort of thing. I used to collect arcade fighting games and the only way to get some of the rarer stuff that was never released in the States was from Japanese yahoo auctions. The exchange rate sucks, you pay a fee on exchange and then another fee for an intermediary and then another fees for shipping.

If you are looking for a cheap place to get Japanese foils since you realized they are worth tons of money you are wasting your time. Getting them straight from Japan isn't going to be cheaper unless you are already physically in Japan.

[abraxas]

I never said anything about getting them for cheap. Just generally good places to look for.

[dontbiteitholmes]

http://auctions.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=FOIL&auccat=25828&alocale=0jp&acc=jp&tab_ex=commerce&ei=euc-jp

You are going to need a service (google - yahoo japan auctions service) because no one will ever ship directly to you from Japan. Expect to pay at least 20% over the end price. Shop around for services, not all are created equal.

[abraxas]

how come American sellers sell and ship thinks overseas with ease on eBay, yet people in other countries refuse to do the same?

I had a hard time trying to buy something from Peru and parts of Europe because of a similar deal.

[dontbiteitholmes]

how come American sellers sell and ship thinks overseas with ease on eBay, yet people in other countries refuse to do the same?

I had a hard time trying to buy something from Peru and parts of Europe because of a similar deal.

Shipping to Italy and Spain is a PITA from America I've had problems with France too. I think a big part of the problem is that so much of the stuff sold in most parts of the world is already readily available from America but the reverse is not true, than add a possible language barrier and the fact that it is a bitch to ship overseas compared to local (you have to figure out shipping costs, ect.)

Use MTG cards as an example. If I'm an American buyer there is a 99.99% chance that any card I'm going to want is going to be just as easy to get from Ebay as it would be from a foreign site. I mean practically every card ever to exist have been sold on American Ebay at some point so why would I go to any other site, especially one that operates in a language I don't understand? Then you have your American sellers. Use me for example. At one point I sold my collection and probably 15% of it went overseas. Had I not shipped overseas I would have lowered the value of 15% of my collection PLUS whatever got bid on by foreign bidders that I'll never know about then ended up getting won at a higher price by domestic buyers.

Now take a seller on Japanese Yahoo or European Ebay. Probably only a fraction of a % of Americans/nonJapanese/nonEuropeans will ever try to use these services compared to a large % of foreigners who use American Ebay. If they ship internationally they have to battle through possible language barriers, scammers, figure out shipping costs to everywhere, and in the end maybe if they're lucky 1 out of every 50 auctions they have will be won by an American bidder. So to them it's not worth it. On American Ebay you have people who are forced to bid higher on some things because there may be a lower price auction that does not ship internationally, so they either bid higher or miss out. It's worth it to ship worldwide when it expands your buying base by 15%. It's just not worth it to most of the rest of the world to even bother. They may miss out on a dollar or 2 every 100 auctions unless they are selling things that are especially rare in the States all the time. Also Ebay is open to people from all over the world. I regularly buy things on American Ebay that come from China, Canada, and Australia. So if someone wanted to go through the trouble of selling things to Americans Ebay would be a better choice anyways.

[Tha Gunslinga]

If you post what you're looking for, we can probably help more.