Forum - View topicHunting for Limited Edition Anime Swag in Japan
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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No mention of secondary market makes this article incomplete, but it does paint a pretty good picture of a very narrow/specific die hard collectible space. Different genres of collectors face similar difficulties, and unique ones, but I think one thing everyone shares is that patience and some web automation can go a long way on finding rare items online.
Just a hair over in another vertical, for example, I have 2 copies of a specific artbook because they came from different printings, and each printing have some differences (namely, different typos and mistakes). This post doesn't say anything about print runs and the really weird stuff that some diehards care about. |
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lavmintrose
Posts: 90 |
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I saw Code Geass: Akito pt 3 when I was in Japan last year... not for the film strip things, but just because I liked it that much.
I wish I could have gotten the illustration cards that they gave out in part 5, though. And I did get... several full sets of the rubber straps for part 3. Not the parts 4 and 5 ones, just the part 3 ones, and then I tracked down the part 4 Julius and Suzaku straps online. |
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mgosdin
 Posts: 1302 Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA |
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Fascinating the lengths that productions go to to get that "True Fan" to visit the store / theater / online and spend his or her hard earned cash. It's entirely understandable that a devotee of a property would want to get as many different perks as they can when they are relatively easy to get.
Japanese are by no means the only people that are weak to the "Limited Edition" label. 
Mark Gosdin |
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rizuchan
 Posts: 975 Location: Kansas |
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As a collector in the US, store exclusives are my bane. Wonder if I'll ever be able to get the Digimon Koushiro and Mimi GEM figures for less than $150 and $200 each...
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ShindoW
 Posts: 88 Location: TX |
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Rizu, I managed to get Koushiro and Mimi around $60-$80 a peice through Mandarake. That store is a godsend.
I totally get this, especially with Digimon. There are so many "limited cafe / digifes /onsen" merch for Tri and I've paid a lot to get exclusive stuff. ^^; Some I still don't have. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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While I appreciate the commentary on the systems used in Japan, I don't really "get" this article. It seems to be written by a non-collector (often citing his own disinterest in "exclusives" and various marketing of such) and doesn't really go into methods for obtaining exclusives BEYOND what can be summed up as "read the advertisements and follow their instructions" (ie. "X is available at Y theater, so go to Y theater to get X"). I mean, for what it IS I guess the article is well written but I don't find it particularly "informative".
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JohnnySake
 Posts: 582 Location: Auburn Hills, MI |
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As much as I try to find things online, I always wonder what is sitting over there is some little non-internet savvy store in Japan that sells anime goods. And it does not have to be the new stuff either.
As it stands, I'm limited to what is posted on a website, auction or store. 
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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The Yahoo JP auctions are probably the absolute BEST place to find random, rare and/or obscure items. Unfortunately: 1) They are SOMETIMES pricey (other times, surprisingly not) 2) They USUALLY don't ship out of Japan, so you need to either know someone IN Japan to act as a go-between, or you need a proxy service, which makes even cheap items suddenly fairly expensive |
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Nico877
Posts: 21 |
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"Regular" editions for anime BDs barely exist these days with the exception of movies. Store-exclusive version is the new Limited Edition and the only difference is that Amazon Japan, for example, charge MSRP for their exclusive version while the non-exclusives sell for around 26% discount of the MSRP. Animate never offer discounts for anything so it doesn't really matter. HMV offers around 12% discount on any anime disc.
I've bought quite a few anime BDs from HMV Japan for their store-exclusive storage boxes (buy all volumes and get a HMV-exclusive box) and also some from Animate and one from Amazon. Would never pay MSRP for just a photo card or whatever (I forget the proper term for it), but boxes are nice, albeit expensive. Compared to Amazon's 26% discount on non-bonus versions to paying MSRP over at Animate usually adds up to around 10-14k Yen for a chipboard box. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3650 |
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I feel their pain in regards to retailer exclusives when it comes to gaming. Hate that nonsense.
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3950 |
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Whenever new volumes of Loveless are released in Japan, I usually end up buying the Animate limited editions because they comes with alternate book covers that I can then use when the volumes are released in English.
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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Personally I subscribe to the view that there's nothing collectable about collectors editions.
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1747 |
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Hmm...never really considered douga (the sheet of paper used as the title image for this story) as a rare promotional item. It's more common to buy duplicate douga or receive them as a bonus, but still...you can, at any given moment, find several auctions on Mandarake and hundreds of them on Yahoo Japan for the original thing. Trying to offer them as some special bonus does little when you can buy them on the secondary market.
I find it amazing how much some people are willing to pay for these items. While the items that were shown don't resale for that much, when the Madoka Magica movies were shown in Japan, some of the film strip clips went for hundreds and thousands of dollars. As purely an art collector, it is hard for me to understand why anyone would want to pay so much for items with high(ish) print runs. While that's not the case with the Madoka film strips, it still boggles my mind when I see mass print runs of 30 year old children's manga sell for a couple grand. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Not super hard to collect stuff in Japan, sure. But for people like me living in the US, collecting Limited Edition Japanese releases is a huge pain in the ass when it comes to store exclusives. I pretty much have no choice other than getting the Amazon version, since most other sites don't ship overseas, or have those sets exclusive to addresses inside Japan. A bunch of these companies have gotten the bright idea of making the store exclusive only available via a redeemable code, which makes even the Amazon exclusive out of reach... since it can only be used on their fully Japanese language website after all other volumes are purchased, and can only be shipped to a Japanese address in every case I've found so far. As a collector of LE stuff, rather than resigning myself to getting the regular version, I usually just don't buy the series at all, in cases like that, until I can get it used via Yahoo auctions a few years later, if at all.
Last edited by relyat08 on Wed May 25, 2016 10:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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omegaproxy
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I love me some gits genga, It'll look great on the walls, like a great paintings on the walls.
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