With a Li'l Bit o' Luck

Back in June or early July, I wasted more than too much time browsing the card listings on Yahoo Japan Auctions. I occasionally come across a seller with a bunch of cards I'm interested in at good prices, and this was one of those times. Most cards below ran only 10 yen (about 10 cents - actually, 8 cents with the current exchange rate) each, with the relics going for only 50 or 100 yen!

 The seller had no photos, I believe, and sometimes vague descriptions. But at a dime each I took my chance. I was hoping this was one of those Upper Deck Baseball Heroes cards, but it just turned out to be a single from Collector's Choice. That said, I really like this card and forgot this subset actually existed. I like how the stats on the back show his whole career, and hide the fact that Ruth finished with the miserable Braves - sure he was with Boston in his last year, but he could have gone back to the Sox for one last hurrah, right? Okay, we know better, but still...

 Awesome! I love art cards.

 I think the seller was either a player collector or came across a bunch of player lots and was breaking them up. I ended up witha  bunch of Burrell.

 I got a great deal on this Ripken insert. Most of the cards went into my type collection.

 When Burrell and the Phillies came to Atlanta, the outfield fans would heckle poor Pat all game long. And then he ended up on the Giants and I had to like him.

 Donruss dumped a whole bunch of pointless inserts on pack openers in the mid-00's. They frequently had potential but came up short on execution.

 A pair of Rolen relics!

 Cheap relics are a type collector's best friend.

 Remember when companies bought anything and everything to put on relic cards? At one time I had a "master" list of everything that I knew had been used as relics in an attempt to eventually have a type collection of those. I may try that again sometime in the future.

 A young Burrell.

 Pacific tried. I'll give them that. There were some pretty cool inserts tossed into some of their packs. This isn't one of them.

 Pacific was one of the first to do rainbows, and there were some really low-numbered parallels in their product. Confusing and pointless.

 But then they also made these cool "playing cards" as well... with parallels.

 At the same time, Upper Deck tried to go "futuristic metal modern shiny explosion busy design" on us and just made crap.

 Topps had several "misses" with sets in the '90s, but in retrospect they are pretty cool. Topps Stars still doesn't appeal to me, but Tek, Embossed, and Laser are great.

When I buy on eBay, I usually have to tack on $3 for shipping, and the lowest auctions usually start at 99 cents. One card, $4. But a YJA auction starts as low as a penny, shipping is usually about 80-100 yen with very little increase per card (I've received whole 90-card sets shipped for as low as $2), and for sellers who accept Japan Post payments, I pay no money transfer fees.

And stuff like this often goes unsold if I don't buy it. More for me!

(Inspiration for today's post title.)

Yu Darvish's True Rookie Cards

Darvish may have MLB rookie cards in 2012, but you can't ignore his start in Japan. He was drafted in 2004, and as such started appearing in card sets in early 2005.

His first card, chronologically, is in the 2005 BBM Rookie Edition set (#12). I think it's safe to say that 99.99% of current rookies get their first card in this annual issue. After that, he appeared as part of a multi-player card featuring the team's draft picks in the "Challengers" box set (#30). And he was included in BBM's 1st and 2nd Version sets (their flagship release) on card #116, with silver and gold signature parallels, and #760.

Other rookie-year sets include two cards in the premium Touch The Game set (#25 and #147), with his first relic card - a game-used ball card with a logo parallel, and a photo card. He also has three Konami game cards.

There's one more rookie-year set that Darvish appears in; he has two cards in the annual Fighters team set. Card #F03 is on the left, below, and subset card #F72 is on the right. The team set, issued in packs, also includes Darvish's first autographed card, a parallel of the base set limited to only 10 copies.

His rookie cards are definitely the key cards in every set above, and while they aren't as expensive as one might pay for Pujols or Ichiro RCs in the US, they usually don't come cheap. But thanks to a poorly-listed auction on Yahoo Japan Auctions, I got both of the above cards and many more singles from Japanese players in the MLB for under $2 shipped. In fact, I didn't realize I was getting Darvish's rookie card until tonight, when I went through and pulled out the singles I needed from the lot.

Even without the RC, I certainly got my money's worth, as several cards went to a small collection I'm working on, and a few others went to my type collection - including that Newcomer parallel above.

Yahoo Auctions: Japan's eBay

Did any of you use Yahoo Auctions when it existed in America? I tried it out a few times, but the US site was seriously lacking compared to eBay. It started in 1998 and lasted for about 10 years in the US, even less in the UK. In fact, it only remains in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.

eBay never got off the ground here. Sellers enjoy the concept of a site that has no fee for listings - eBay has listing fees, final value fees, PayPal requirements and fees. And all those happen for every auction. Yahoo started with no fees at all, though they now charge a monthly fee (about $4) and a flat fee of about 5% on final auction values (with some exceptions), also seemingly calculated monthly.

Another problem I think eBay had was payment methods. Japan relies heavily on bank transfers, and the heavy emphasis on PayPal really made things tough. Yahoo does have an online payment system where buyers can pay with credit card or bank transfers through their site, but bank payments are still allowed.

Yahoo in Japan feels a lot like eBay did when it was great - relatively simple and fairly user-friendly if you understand Japanese. I usually use the website, but the iPhone app is pretty handy too. The low fees for sellers means prices start fairly low and shipping is via post - 82 cents at the lowest.

Now, paying for auctions has a cost. Using Yahoo's system, you can pay a 100 yen (about $1) fee to use a credit card, or 162 yen to do a bank transfer. There is a 0-yen method that I would like to learn how to use, which I think requires going to certain banks and paying at the ATMs there.

I'm able to pay using my bank's online system, too - the fee there is 100 yen unless it's to my same bank (those transfers are free). I compare that to eBay - the lowest shipping there seems to be $2, though it's usually $3 or $4 for just one card.

Speaking of shipping, I mentioned that dealers generally offer shipping at or under $1 for single cards. I recently received a 24-card set shipped for $1, and the three thick cards you see below were shipped for $1 total. I just won a 95-card set where the seller is charging $2 for basic shipping.

So, what have I been buying? Not that much, really, and it's mostly been cheap stuff. I bought my second and third series Calbee sets off Yahoo. In the past couple weeks I've been learning about how to make payments and using the communication system. Shipping addresses and such need to be typed in to each dealer, as well as telling the seller which bank the money was sent to (many sellers have multiple banks). With help from a coworker, I've essentially developed a form letter that I copy from auction to auction.

My first multi-auction win is a group of three cards from Immaculate Collection. I was bidding on another card that I didn't end up winning.

One of those is numbered to 49, and all three will fit in my type collection. Combined with shipping and payment fee, these cards cost me under $5.

I can certainly see myself using Yahoo for MLB and NPB single cards as I get better and better at using the site.  Much like eBay was wonderful for my collections in the late 1990s through mid 2000s, Yahoo opens up a whole world of merchandise in my (not-so-)new country.

By the way, eBay does still exist here, basically through the main portal site. But I imagine only savvy businesses selling Japanese goods to overseas buyers, and collectors of international things use it. (Keep in mind that shipping from the US to Japan is super-expensive.)