I did use rakuten a few times. I used the japanese one where you needed a shopping service. I think it shut down now. F. I wasn't too pressed about getting figures that weren't in the original boxes. It wasn't like I wasn't gonna keep those boxes anyway. I only have a few figures still in boxes only because they don't have stands and are more valuable. Most other figures I don't keep in the original boxes. Wow you have some old school hobbies. Not met anyone who collected stamps. That's some cool stuff. You collect any of the new stamps? Not worth anything now, but they got some cool ones. I have a lot of expensive hobbies... and I collect more than just figures. I should upload some other stuff to this thread when I get around to it. There are some hobbies I want to get into but I just cannot afford to. It's why I don't have any video game consoles. It's not that I don't enjoy them, it's just I can't afford it. I gotta rotate all the stuff i'm interested in. I admit Japan not being able to ship anything to the US has been a good thing for me but I miss not being able to get any new figures.
@Busty_Nerd - ya I saw last week Rakuten Global has stopped, Amazon JP is lil tough to understand and translation are all over the place. Rakuten was an amazing place. I do not want to admit it, but I have spent hours finding really strange things from shoes, to incense to wallets, whatnot. Philately was an old hobby, as a child had a bit less of a shame, I use to go around consulates in my city to see if someone threw some old envelope in the bin, so that I could tear out the stamp bit. Thankfully parents never knew about my dumpster adventures. Post that once I learnt about stamps a bit. I tried collecting FDC, First Day Cover. But with the influx of e-shops, loads of stamps were available, however, tough to know who is just selling some random printout vs genuine stamps. I have over 1000 stamps, some I have given away but rest is just stored safely.
I know what you mean I do Japanese auctions and taobao sometimes. Depends on if I have the patience to deal with everything that goes into being patient and winning auctions and waiting a few months for everything and potentially losing your auctions. It's exhausting as well as dealing with the time differences. Well you wouldn't be much of a collector if you weren't willing to get your hands dirty sometimes. It has become a nightmare to get genuine printed goods now with how many fakes there are out there online. Glad I was never much into collecting printed goods like cards or autographs, that seems like an exhausting hobby. I used to collect pokemon and yugioh cards. Now I am not interested in them anymore and got rid of all of them.
@Busty_Nerd = respect to you, I never ever had the patience for auctions. I just am in awe of people who can pull such feats of "watch and wait". You take some time and get your other stuff nicely captured and share it.
As I've gotten older, they stress me out and I choose not to do them if I have the option. The waiting was never the issue it was always the snipers at the end. You had to know how to play the game. I used to be really good now it's usually the time difference where I don't usually stay up to finish the auction or I lose the auction because it ends up going over the original amount.
@Busty_Nerd you have gone wiser and do not want to deal with those last-minute snipers. Worse of all you can get a Javascript that can do it digitally and at a millisecond trigger. So manual clicking is always beaten. That's how flash-sales of thousands of products disappear in 10 seconds.
Japanese people invented sniping lol so you always had to stay up till ungodly hours of the morning to wait till the auction was over to see if you won. And honestly? I'm almost 30 i'm a grandma and wanna go to bed early. I don't have the time to stay up all night. So I tend to go for the BIN options almost always. Now for American auctions I always win because they don't do sniping and don't know how to win.
@Busty_Nerd Ignores the 30 grandma statement, as makes me feel much older. I completely get the feel of "add to cart" and move on. I usually put things in my cart and do not purchase. Then at times, they would email me - "hey we saw you got the such-n-such thing in the cart, here take 5$ off" and then I buy it. Not always successful but the Scrooge inside of me gets the best of me sometimes.
Honestly that's a huge mood lol I do that all the time. Sometimes it gets annoying but I appreciate it when places do that.
Well, I have a collection of movie collectables like movie cups, popcorn buckets and movie posters. I also have a huge library of Blu-ray movies. I am definitely a movie buff, lol.
Nice to meet a movie lover of this extent. That's cool you collect popcorn buckets that's unorthodox. (And to see my thread didn't die) Reminds me to update this thread.
I guess stuff I collect would be Britney Spears related things. Pictures, merch, little figurines, a Pepsi can with Britney on it. Just a lot of things. Walls covered in posters of her.
Lol well currently she isn't. I have a feeling she will though. I think she's focused on more of her personal life. She can't just leave 9 albums lol she must at least give us album 10 lol