I wanted to add that while it is a great time to import General Releases from Tamashii Nations, Web Exclusive (P-Bandai) releases tend to cost just a little over NA domestic MSRP due to middleman markup and shipping costs (DHL/FEDEX/UPS). If you are someone who wants to save some coin, waiting for the NA domestic release would be the way to go, albeit you have to wait at least over a month after the JP release to get it.
It breaks my heart when 7-Eleven stores over there in Japan they have Kaiju Godzilla creatures products for sale for dirt cheap 😢 well when I go to my 7-Eleven stores they don't have any of that stuff😅 I've got a favorites folder on RU-vid of live streams of Japan I check on a train station Mount Fuji a castle/crossing guard children and people walk over... Yeah I would love to go to Japan experience the hidden locations especially the vintage stores of toys😤 especially watching Godzilla stores products you can get the dirt cheap but you can get it on eBay but you have to cough up a lot of money ..hopefully one day. Abroad in Japan is a RU-vid channel and his friends travel around Japan NHK puts on sumo wrestling highlights in English. They just did 15 days a tournament recently... On my bucket list Japan.
Given how the yen is even weaker than the Canadian dollar, my wife has been splurging on yen for an eventual future trip (I've been, she has not). I, on the other hand, have been buying Japanese King Kong crap on Buyee 😆
Welp, time to checkout all those Mandarake carts. I dunno if JPY is weaker to IDR tho, so maybe I won't be effected much. I hope to visit Japan one day. I really wanna visit Sawara. That place looks beautiful and peaceful. A nice and breezy countryside, with clean rivers and many greens, free from high-rise building, factory smokes. AND more importantly, the Manadarake there somehow got the most complete items on my wishlist. Vinyls (both MMS and non-Bandai retro vinyls), SHF and SHM at a good price, Figma, Premium Bandai and exclusive goods, rare Shokugan, etc. If I ever go to Japan, I'll go with deep pockets and an empty suitcase, maybe two. And... then I gotta pay for taxes of all the items I bought. Dang it
Great video, thanks for sharing! I wonder if this is good time to make ebay-style purchases of older toys from sellers in Japan. As you said, manufacturing is done in China, so new figures probably won't drop in price, but maybe North American buyers will have more purchasing power when it comes to older toys on Yahoo Japan. GForever sometimes buys from Yahoo Japan, so I'll have to ask him. Cheers.
Another thing ı want to note is yen is not getting less value or lesser worth infact its still gaining value but on a extremly slow study rate its pace is way slower than usual compared to other currencys that are decent specially usd infact usd constantly gets more value overtime damaging japanese econamy or any other country that has a currency that value does not increase or increase very slightly it still doesnt equal yen is getting less value it equals yen is staying same while usd gets more value and worth
Articulation series isn't an official account actually. Its essentially a fan account. The only official account for SHMA would be Tamashii Nations on social media platforms and possibly the Bandai Spirits YT channel (don't know if Tamashii has a dedicated YT account). Articulation series just specializes in the SHMA figure line specifically and seemingly has ties with the official accounts since they do get tons of official promo images and info early.
Price discrimination exist its just a scummy way of local pricing most of the time local pricing just makes the price more affordable aka cheaper for poor countrys or keep it similar to original price but price discrimination? it makes it more expensive than original price for no apperant or proper reason its just companys being greedy most of the time only excuse ım able to give is ı live in a relatively poor country by econamy and a lot of outside products we got from other countrys has this price discrimination more expensive than actual price but were also know that our country has a ridicilious tax system for any product coming from outside lets say ıd wanted to get an hiya godzilla figure for 50bucks big bad toy store as an extra charges me 5bucks for delivery then warns me about taxes which is 18bucks but doesnt charge it we atleast get %40 of the products full price as taxes means ı need to pay atleast 20more bucks to this figure on top of that when ı got the figure ı need to again pay extra around 1-5bucks for receving it ım not aware of similar laws in america or canada or any other country but ı noticed theres not many price gaps for japanese imported figures even if there are theyre less than shma which makes me think this gets done on purpose rather than country forcing it ı consider this as companys scummy way to make profit
