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Your Monthly/Yearly Expenses


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superdry



Joined: 07 Jan 2012
Posts: 1309
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:01 pm Reply with quote
Total for February 2012 - ~$1350

HMV JP - $704
Amiami - $650

Fun fact, shipping cost was about 10% of my monthly import expenditure.

KoH - I remember the days of exchange rate being 120:1. Oh, how I wish those days were back.

edit: Total was even worse since I keep forgetting a small shipment from HMV in the beginning of the month.


Last edited by superdry on Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:38 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23668
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:18 pm Reply with quote
@TKoH - I may not complain about a lack of shelf space, but boy do I ever suffer from it. Right now my collection is housed in two large bookcases (I believe they are "Billy" bookcases from Ikea) and in the great, honking TV cabinet I have that also has a lot of shelf space. That's just my unwatched stuff. To make room for that, I had to put all my watched titles in various boxes. It's a freaking mess. Anyway, once I've bought some more bookcases (I'll need at least three because I want to display my non-anime DVDs again which are also now all in boxes) and once I've figured out how to download pix from my camera to my computer, I will allow you all to feast on the glory that is my collection (including muh figures).

@ superdry - actually, to have your shipping only be 10% of your import expenditure is not bad. Whenever I import figures or other stuff from Japan, I'm lucky if I get away with a shipping cost that is 15% of the overall cost.
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The King of Harts



Joined: 05 May 2009
Posts: 6712
Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:22 pm Reply with quote
Blood-chan wrote:
in various boxes

Crying or Very sad

@superdry
Man, you pure importing types spend crazy money when you realize you aren't getting much quantity. I'm getting more into importing this year (mostly figures), but I think I'm only gonna stick to one or two shows a year since that stuff starts to add up and the dollar:yen isn't great even though it's better than what it was.

I already have AnoNatsu on the docket and I may get Black Rock Shooter (the singles, not the box set) if English subs get confirmed and that's two right there from the same season with overlapping release months. I just don't want to jump that gun when I don't know what Summer or Fall will bring me, but BRS is starting to look really, really good. If there wasn't a chance for subs I'd be content with just getting some figures, but subs are the tipping point.

Quote:
KoH - I remember the days of exchange rate being 120:1. Oh, how I wish those days were back.

Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered. I wish I could see something like that, but I'll settle for 90 or 100:1.
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Sailor S





PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 3:30 pm Reply with quote
@Blood - Ikea is great for housing collections. I have all my manga up in a bunch of those Billy bookcases, and most of my figures are in their Detolf display cases. I'm gonna have to find something else to house my 1/3 scale figures though, the Detolfs just can't manage it without removing half the shelves, and that just feels like wasted space then.

My spending this month was much more under control. I only spent $464.63, and hopefully March will be a bit cheaper still. The breakdown of that was

Anime - $185.69
Manga - $43.36
Figures - $85.58
Character Goods - $150

My YTD total is $1800.06

I also pine for the days of well over 100 yen per dollar, but if I saw 90 again I'd be thrilled. I'm not so sure I'd have gotten hooked on buying figures if I started today and was spending what I do now.
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superdry



Joined: 07 Jan 2012
Posts: 1309
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:23 pm Reply with quote
The King of Harts wrote:

@superdry
Man, you pure importing types spend crazy money when you realize you aren't getting much quantity. I'm getting more into importing this year (mostly figures), but I think I'm only gonna stick to one or two shows a year since that stuff starts to add up and the dollar:yen isn't great even though it's better than what it was.


The breakdown for my total came out to:
7 Blu-Rays (Idolmaster vol. 5 + G4U sorta skews things towards the higher side)
7 CDs
3 Games
2 Character Goods.

Not too terrible, really. I also like the extras that usually come with a Japanese release too. For example, both volume 1 of Maken-ki (dakimakura) and volume 6 of Mayo Chiki! (artbox and fighting game for the PC that was shown in the anime) came with some nifty stuff.

I guess after importing anime for a year (I've imported stuff from Japan over the last 10 years between figures, CDs, manga and artbooks), I've gotten use to the price. I do limit myself to no more than three shows per season since they are expensive. I could buy more if I didn't buy merchandise and games.

Oh, yea...importing really starts to add up especially when you put in pre-orders at various places.

Quote:

Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered. I wish I could see something like that, but I'll settle for 90 or 100:1.


I'm super-happy that the exchange rate is finally back up to ~80:1. I'd love to see 90:1 to again.
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HitokiriShadow



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 6251
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:56 pm Reply with quote
Blood- wrote:

@ superdry - actually, to have your shipping only be 10% of your import expenditure is not bad. Whenever I import figures or other stuff from Japan, I'm lucky if I get away with a shipping cost that is 15% of the overall cost.


That's the difference between BDs and figures. The costs for the items are going to be similar, but the shipping costs for BDs are going to be much lower, particularly if you're using Amazon.jp. My shipping costs for BDs have typically been under 500 yen for items that rarely cost less than 5,000 yen. That will change this year though, thanks to their new shipping policy, which makes it impractical to make orders large enough to get the cost that low.

On the other hand, I think superdry uses HMV for a decent number of his BD orders, so he'd be paying for shipping in weight anyway. Still, they're usually going to be lighter than figures so that would reduce the shipping costs compared to figures.

Depending on the games he bought, that could have a big effect too. LEs of games tend to cost over 10k. You can't use Amazon.jp (well, not without using a forwarding service, like I did for the Haganai game, and that drastically increases the shipping costs) but its going to weigh less or at least not more than most figures, so the shipping costs will be a smaller %.


I've been keeping track of my import expenses but I haven't yet added them up to see what I spend on a monthly or yearly basis. I'm kind of scared to, to be honest.
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The King of Harts



Joined: 05 May 2009
Posts: 6712
Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 6:35 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
That will change this year though, thanks to their new shipping policy, which makes it impractical to make orders large enough to get the cost that low.

I've heard this come up a few times before, but I don't know what people are talking about when they say it. What's changing?
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superdry



Joined: 07 Jan 2012
Posts: 1309
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:03 pm Reply with quote
HitokiriShadow wrote:

That's the difference between BDs and figures.

On the other hand, I think superdry uses HMV for a decent number of his BD orders, so he'd be paying for shipping in weight anyway. Still, they're usually going to be lighter than figures so that would reduce the shipping costs compared to figures.


Yup, I pretty much have exclusively switched to HMV for the majority of my anime purchasing.

Figures also will have a higher cost if you have a few of them because a larger box will be used and the Japanese (unless you're Amazon) love to use sturdy boxes that add to the shipping weight. If I order 2 BDs and say 2 CDs, HMV will ship that in a sturdy bubble mailer and my shipping cost will only come out to like 1500 yen for EMS.

Quote:

Depending on the games he bought, that could have a big effect too. LEs of games tend to cost over 10k.


Two regular edition games and the limited edition Haganai game. Speaking of which, how heavy is the box for the Haganai limited edition? My copy just shipped out so I won't get it for the next two days or so.

The King of Harts wrote:
Quote:
That will change this year though, thanks to their new shipping policy, which makes it impractical to make orders large enough to get the cost that low.

I've heard this come up a few times before, but I don't know what people are talking about when they say it. What's changing?


Amazon is changing how they partial ship stuff in an order. Previously, they would just ship stuff out as it was released which made a lot of sense to place a large order to help lower the per unit shipping cost since Amazon doesn't ship by weight, but per item.

Now, I think Amazon is holding orders more frequently now. HitokiriShadow can probably explain it better since I rarely use Amazon now.
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The King of Harts



Joined: 05 May 2009
Posts: 6712
Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:13 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Now, I think Amazon is holding orders more frequently now. HitokiriShadow can probably explain it better since I rarely use Amazon now.

fudge. I might have to cancel my AnoNatsu order now since I had planned on making ~$65 payments per month. I mean, it'd be easy enough to just take the money I'd use per month and save it until August, but that's not what I wanted to do. Decisions, decisions.
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superdry



Joined: 07 Jan 2012
Posts: 1309
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:15 pm Reply with quote
The King of Harts wrote:
Quote:
Now, I think Amazon is holding orders more frequently now. HitokiriShadow can probably explain it better since I rarely use Amazon now.

fudge. I might have to cancel my AnoNatsu order now since I had planned on making ~$65 payments per month. I mean, it'd be easy enough to just take the money I'd use per month and save it until August, but that's not what I wanted to do. Decisions, decisions.


They might still partial ship...it can pretty random.
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HitokiriShadow



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 6251
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:43 pm Reply with quote
superdry wrote:

Quote:

Depending on the games he bought, that could have a big effect too. LEs of games tend to cost over 10k.


Two regular edition games and the limited edition Haganai game. Speaking of which, how heavy is the box for the Haganai limited edition? My copy just shipped out so I won't get it for the next two days or so.


Tenso claimed the weight as 920g in the shipping e-mail. I assume that included the Amazon.jp box. I haven't weighed it myself, so I'm not sure what just the box weighs. It feels pretty similar to the OreImo LE box (which I think I remember you mentioning you bought), maybe slightly heavier. The contents of the box are pretty similar, as both contain 2 UMD cases, a book, and a DVD case. OreImo had the stick posters while Haganai has clearfiles, and the box is bigger due to the size of the clearfiles. Any weight differences is likely due to the larger box.



Quote:
The King of Harts wrote:

I've heard this come up a few times before, but I don't know what people are talking about when they say it. What's changing?


Now, I think Amazon is holding orders more frequently now. HitokiriShadow can probably explain it better since I rarely use Amazon now.


Yeah, basically. They used to ship everything as soon as it came in. If you had two items in the same order that came in a day apart, they would be shipped to you separately. So it was a good idea to order an entire series (or two or three) at once, to get the most out of that 1700 per order fee. It did this despite selecting the option to minimize shipments. As soon as you placed the order, it would be split up into a bunch of different shipments.

But they don't do that any more. They still partial ship, as some people at Mania and Fandom Post have had happen to them, but its unpredictable. If you ordered all of AnoNatsu, they might partial ship it at some point, but you'd have no way of knowing when that would happen. Or they might actually hold onto all of them until the last volume comes out. You just don't know.

I used to order every volume in a series at once (usually with a few other things for good measure), but now I have to order on monthly or bi-monthly basis. So I had three February releases I'm buying, but only one shipped this month because Hanasaku Iroha #8 was ordered before the change in policy (the new policy didn't change orders that had already been made). I put Haganai #2 and the Hayate movie in with my March orders, because it just didn't seem worth it to make a 2 disc order.

As a result, Amazon is either a lot less cost effective or requires a high level of patience and/or acceptance of uncertainty as to when things will ship. So basically, its just not as useful for people that are only buying one or two shows at a time. I'll be buying several shows from this season in addition to Haganai, so its worth it to me to stick with Amazon for now, but whenever I'm back down to only ordering one or two shows a month, I might need to make an HMV account.
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Sailor S





PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:49 am Reply with quote
I was looking through my bank statement and I just noticed that I forgot to add on a figure that posted to my account on the 29th, so my monthly total for figures should have another $111.64 tacked onto it, bringing my monthly expenses to $576.27 and my YTD total to $1911.70. Not quite as frugal a month as I had first thought, but still better than January I guess.
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Mankat



Joined: 08 Feb 2012
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2012 5:28 am Reply with quote
My bank statement says that I spent 200.49 dollars on anime. That would bring my yearly amount to 200.49....I just started up buying things again
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Mylene



Joined: 07 Feb 2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Indiana
PostPosted: Thu Mar 01, 2012 7:36 am Reply with quote
February expenses: $4.99 (I split my annual Crunchyroll costs across all 12 months)

I'm moving soon, and didn't want to risk any new orders to avoid something showing up at the wrong address. Latter half of this month might make up for the first two months of the year. I have my eyes on some new DVDs and figures.
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Tenbyakugon



Joined: 11 Jan 2012
Posts: 788
Location: Ohio, United States
PostPosted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:53 am Reply with quote
Anyone that knows me well will tell you that if I buy a DVD, it is because it is serious, serious business. My current collection spans a few Charlie Brown DVD's, that crappy Honk Kong bootleg of the Hikaru no Go series (For HnG, I wanted to own some form of it for my archiving purposes.), a Case Closed DVD, a Yu-Gi-Oh! DVD, and a Pocket Monsters film all gotten as gifts, and the random State of Play DVD I picked up from the local Movie Gallery when it was closing down for a $5 bill.

Manga's my thing, my library being last counted at six-hundred-forty-something (It's hard keeping track anymore Laughing ). Some people watch and then read, I'm much more the read-then-watch person. It'd probably be more accurate to give the average I spend yearly just based on list prices than to try and sift through both bank records and memories to get the most exact amount spent each year. So, I've been collecting manga for shortly over 6 years now, and average per year I calculated to about $961.00. (After adding up the total list prices of each series and dividing by six years.)

Total Spending, Last Six Years
~$961 * 6
$5766.01

This news with Bandai is beyond ridiculous, so I needed to act fast to grab both seasons of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion from TRSI. I'm big on watching anime, not so much on collecting it, but Code Geass I hold more dearly than every other I've seen, except probably Hikaru no Go (which I'm eagerly awaiting any announcement on a DVD release for (but wouldn't be surprised if they've considered it dust in the wind since last May). I'm a social sciences university major, which may explain long-story-short why I do enjoy it so much.

I don't keep a budget, as I'm not exactly at the point in my life when I need to. (A few bills, but nothing that's fussed over.)

Total Spending, February 2012
$29.99 + $29.99
$59.98

My total spending for February equals the total spending I've had for at least the last year-to-year-and-a-half. And honestly, there're more significant things I like to spend my money on, and the few series I do hold dear make them just that much greater to me. Wink
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