GAH

[telophase]

You wanna know how much some online doujinshi sellers are gouging (or attempting to gouge) buyers for? The Zaraki-schoolgirl one I just posted about is on eBay for $24.99 plus shipping from Japan.

You know how much I paid for it, used, in Mandarake? 420 yen. That's approximately four bucks. I'm sure it was probably twice that new, and I've got no problem with sellers tacking on a little extra to cover their time and hassle involved in getting it and running auctions and suchlike, but $24.99 is ridiculous.

I've got a couple I'll probably eBay, but I'm going to put the starting bid as the cost I paid plus how much it cost to ship it from Japan ($1.50 each: I shipped 49 books for $70). There's about 3 or 4 books that cost me a lot because they were new (I think one was 2800ish yen, and one was 1200ish yen), but most were 800 yen or below.

Comments

[heyoka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've always been frustrated by the online doujinshi market. Man, I miss Mandarake. ;_;

[telophase.livejournal.com]

One thing about the Japan trip that I'm really glad for is that now I've got a decent idea of what they cost in Japan, and how much shipping to allow for.

[octopedingenue]

The Shikamaru/Temari doujinshi anthology I would KILL for, Love Parade, went for $50 or so last week on eBay. If it weren't rent week/if I were paid a living wage, I might have gone for it.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

At the moment, I'm collecting doujinshi by Aileen. I've only got 2 of them. :) But my upper limit for each is $30+shipping: if someone wants to pay more than that, they're welcome to it. So I've lost a couple on eBay, but oh well. I've got to draw a line somewhere. XD

[octopedingenue]

Behold! It has 114 pages! It has my rare-ish 2nd-tier-characters het pairing of choice! It has a deeply pretty cover! But yeah, I maxed out around $30 bidding, too.

I wonder how many English-speaking Japanese residents make their living off USA fandom tchotchke supply & demand. I would totally do it. I'd have to, to pay for my plane ticket. But I'd charge double the price max.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I suspect several people who post to the Bleach comms I monitor of making a decent living off of it. There's one who was selling the Bleach: The Styling figurines for $12 each plus shipping, when they cost $4.00 in the convenience stores over there. (But I got a Rukia from a Taiwanese seller, which wasn't a bootleg, for the grand price of $ .01 plus $10 shipping, which I'm OK with.)

[heyoka.livejournal.com]

(I think Mandarake closed their Torrance branch so they could focus on selling doujinshi online, because of the hella larger profit margin. :P )

[tirwen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I picked up one from Yahoo Japan for 500 yen (although it wound up being a lot more thanks to the proxy), but it was still less than the $39.99 plus shipping that one person was charging for it... :/

[homasse.livejournal.com]

...$25?! Good lord; that's almost as much as I paid for that GD Mechano FMA doujin I showed you in Kyoto. Good gravy. Holy price gouging, Batman.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup. It's one thing to start an auction low and have the bidding climb up to that amount or more, and quite another to start at Godawful Expensive.

[snarp]

I learned today that I have the potential a deeply capitalistically skeevy person. I was in a used manga shop today looking at some video games, and found myself thinking stuff like, "Hmm... this is only ten bucks, and I'm pretty sure I've seen it go for sixty on eBay... maybe I should buy it..."

(I finally decided not to, but only really because my recent investments in Kingdom of Loathing have all been backfiring. Maybe the stock market would be in better shape if potential investors were required to play an MMO for a year before they could buy any stock.)

[octopedingenue]

garagesalejapan is a great place to spend rent money watch people try to gouge each other, especially the highschoolers who are all "OOOOHHH I live by a Japanese import store I am going to make MEEEEELLIONS off of Hello Kitty erasers!!!" (But I got Kazuya Minekura's Just!! there for $5 shipped!)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just looked over there and I note the first person whose prices I looked has has no clue that Paypal does not allow you to charge your buyers the Paypal fees: that's legally the responsibility of the seller. (What you do, of coruse, is roll the fees into the price of the item; you just don't list them separately. XD)

[lady-noremon.livejournal.com]

Ah Kingdom of Loathing *heeh*

I suggest that they be made to play ether RuneScape or KoL :P