I spend a fair amount of time on eBay looking for items to add to my collection and I’ve learned that there are just some things you can’t get in America. Sometimes products aren’t popular in the U.S., leading to fewer options and higher prices; other times they weren’t sold in the U.S. market at all. I’ve run into this with both retro computing and photography equipment but often times these items can be found in larger quantities and lower prices in the Japanese market. So what’s an American to do?
They could try to find Japanese items on the U.S. version of eBay. Products do exist, labeled as “from Japan”, but often incur high shipping costs and additional import duties. They could shop directly on Japanese sites, but translation can be a pain, currency must be converted, and many sellers won’t ship internationally. They could use a proxy service, like Buyee, which provides English account setup, page translation, accepts Pay Pal, and handles international shipping. That sounds like a better option and is what I experimented with recently.
I first heard about Buyee over the summer while collecting older cameras and lenses. Japan is the home market for nearly all major cameras and can have a much larger selection of vintage equipment than eBay does in the states. It’s not that eBay doesn’t have these items, it’s just that Japanese sites often have more variety selling for lower prices. I considered using it for lenses but decided to keep my collection small. I heard about it again when I started collecting MiniDisc players and decided to give it a try.
The Japanese One Two Step
So how does a proxy service like Buyee work? You start by shopping one of several auction sites through Buyee’s website. I use JD Auctions, which sources from Yahoo Auctions. The site uses Google to translate the listings to English and provides the price in Yen as well as U.S. dollars. You bid on items through Buyee’s website and they bid on your behalf on the Japanese auction site.
If you win, the price of item plus tax, local shipping within Japan, and a handling fee are charged. The seller ships the item to one of Buyee’s warehouses in Japan and you pay Buyee for international shipping to the states. You can pay an additional fee for them to verify that the item matches what was ordered, send a photo for verification, or repack it for the international trip. This is a two-step process that requires payment twice, and, while Buyee provides an international shipping estimate tool, the final price isn’t calculated until it reaches their warehouse.
Select * from Japan
MiniDisc was far more popular in Japan than it ever was in the U.S. and there’s much more MD hardware available than on eBay. Due to a larger selection, there are more price points that skew lower, even with taxes and local shipping. I made my first purchase on Buyee purchase, my first MiniDisc recorder, before the Christmas holiday and received it before New Year’s.
In addition to MiniDisc hardware I found something else that was more popular in Japan: Magneto Optical (MO) drives. MO drives are closely related to MiniDisc (same tech, but different sizes) and were famously used as the primary storage mechanism for Steve Jobs’ NeXT computers. I bought an MO drive bay module for my PowerBook 3400 last year “for parts” and unfortunately was not able to get it working. I’ve been looking for alternatives ever since but there just aren’t many on eBay. There are plenty on Buyee however, so I bought two. One is a USB model certified to work with the Mac and the other is a SCSI model with a SCSI to USB adapter included! That may sound mundane, but it’s a huge find as SCSI to USB adapters were extremely rare and usually sell for $150 or more in the states on their own. I got mine with a drive for $63 plus shipping and should be able to use it on other SCSI devices I own, like my Iomega Jaz drives. Both MO drives also included their original boxes, cords, manuals, and software. Pretty great finds!
The Rate of Exchange
So it definitely has more selection, but is the Japanese market less expensive than at home? Sort of, but you have to be smart about shipping. I didn’t understand that until I bought my first MD recorder. With fees, taxes, and shipping within Japan, I spent $48. To ship it to the U.S. cost another $30, for a total of $78. I later bought the same exact model from eBay in the U.S. for $50 shipped, so Japan did not provide much of a benefit in that scenario.
The pro tip is to leverage Buyee’s combined shipping. They will hold items at their warehouse and ship them as one package, offering significant savings over shipping individually. I consolidated five items (3 MiniDisc recorders and 2 MO drives) that cost $205 to purchase and ship to Buyee’s warehouse. To get them to America, would have cost an additional $212 if shipped individually. When combined, that fell to $94, saving 56%, and bringing shipping down to about $19 per item. The one thing to watch for is that items can only stay at the warehouse for 30 days before a daily fee is assessed, so you need to make sure all of your items make it there within that timeframe.
So back to the original question, with “shipping hack” included: is this stuff any cheaper in Japan than in the U.S? Below are the prices I paid items from Japan, showing the base price as well as the total cost with international shipping included.
Buyee Prices
| Source | Item | Price | Total with Shipping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyee | Sony MZ-R30 Blue | $13 | $33 |
| Buyee | Sony MZ-R30 Silver | $45 | $65 |
| Buyee | Sony MZ-R55 | $49 | $65 |
| Buyee | MO SCSI USB | $67 | $89 |
| Buyee | MO USB | $33 | $49 |
| Buyee | Sony MZ-R3 | $48 | $78 |
| eBay | Sony MZ-E40 | $32 | $37 |
| eBay | Sony MZ-R3 | $35 | $50 |
The R3 I purchased on eBay was certainly cheaper than on Buyee and the E40 came in only a few dollars lower than my lowest cost R30 on Buyee. The savings isn’t really showing for those items, but it comes into play for items I didn’t also buy from eBay.
Let’s take a look at closed auctions on eBay for similar devices. These ranges do not include shipping, but I’d estimate it adds about $10 to the price:
- Sony MZ-R30: $40 – $80
- Sony MZ-R55: $40 – $60
- MO Drive: $ 80 – $100
Comparing between the two, my R30’s fall generally within the range of eBay, skewing slightly cheaper. The R55 ended up being just outside of the eBay range, but would probably have matched it with eBay shipping included. The MO drives illustrate the best outcome, coming in quite a bit lower than eBay. Buyee had a far wider selection as well; I couldn’t even find boxed Mac-compatible USB drives on eBay.
The Rest of It
There are selection and sometimes price advantages to shopping directly in Japan, but none of it matters if the experience is too difficult or the products arrive broken. In my experience, the Buyee site is serviceable enough. It provides ways to search multiple auction and shopping sites (though not simultaneously), supports watch lists (with “auction ending soon” email notifications), and includes an equivalent of buy it now. It can translate English searches into Japanese to increase the hit rate, provides automatic auction title translation, and optional description translation through Google Translate.
The biggest drawback of the site is its speed, or lack thereof. While it’s a modern site, it acts much like a Web 1.0 site from the early internet days, with multi-second reloads on the watch list and when loading item details. The bidding process is also slow, without a real-time count down to the end of the auction and a multi-second delay when submitting bids. This makes it impossible to use my “bid in the last 5 seconds” strategy from eBay.
In addition many auctions support “Automatic Extension”, which extends the auction for 5 minutes if a bid is received in the last 5 minutes before close. I was very confused the first time I encountered it and couldn’t understand why the auction continued to have “5 minutes remaining” for nearly 30 minutes.
Luckily there’s another feature called “Sniper Bid” that takes a maximum bid and submits it automatically in those last 5 minutes. It is actually a pretty cool feature that I use to “set it and forget it” and bid on things days ahead of time. I recently put 6 sniper bids in and won 5 auctions in one day. I just checked my email every now and then to watch the wins roll in.
Speaking of winning auctions, that’s a slow process as well. It can take several hours to confirm the winner, even if it’s clear that the sale price was within your maximum bid. You just wait for a success email to arrive and for the “determining the winner” message to disappear from the auction page.
Shipping from Buyee’s warehouse is straightforward. You get an email as your items arrive and each can stay in the warehouse for 30 days before daily fees are assessed. Items can be shipped individually or combined and can be shipped via several methods options at different price points and delivery times. So far I’ve always chosen Buyee’s Air option because it’s a little cheaper than Japan Post and its estimate is a few days shorter. In every case I’ve received my items in only a few days undamaged. Unless items are bundled together, they ship in the original packaging, which can be a bit risky, but I’ve been lucky that it’s been fine. You can pay Buyee to repackage items if they aren’t being bundled.
Would I Do It Again?
Yes. In fact, I’ve purchased over 20 items bundled into 4 shipments and all of them have been great. While it can be a bit clunky at times, I’ve found Buyee to be a reliable way to buy old computing equipment. The prices can be better than U.S. eBay and the selection is often far better for harder-to-find items. Shipping is reasonable and can be optimized by bundling things together. I don’t know how returns work, but I’ve been fortunate so far not to need them. I’m continuing to browse for specific Mini Disc players and discs that I’ll combine into single shipments. I may also start looking for used lenses to see how that goes. All-in-all, I’m glad I found it and do recommend.
Relatively Ambitious 