Collecting Japanese Booster Box Advice?

H

HarlemThorne

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hi!

After a good 8 years of not buying pokemon cards (I kinda just stopped when I was around 12, even though i've always kept up with pokemon) and now i'm at an age where I have a decent amount of disposable income i've been looking to get back into collecting. I'm planning to collect (hopefully) English AND Japanese sets, I want english but at the same time I see things like the pokekyun set and can't help but want the Japanese prints too.
I know a lot of good UK shops to source booster boxes from but when it comes to Japanese i'm completely clueless - getting them isn't a problem as I have a friend in tokyo I can have them shipped to but I have no idea where to look

So short version, where's the best place to buy Japanese Booster boxes from - any good official japanese sites people have used? (I guess first XY but any is fine really since i'm looking to get sets of everything eventually) How expensive are they in general compared to UK / US ones - it'd be a blessing if they weren't as expensive as the UK ones haha

Thanks for any help!
 
AmiAmi is one of the best websites to buy Japanese Pokémon TCG stuff from. They sell for less than MSRP, and they even ship internationally so you don't even have to worry about having a middleman ship you stuff. Here is their Pokémon TCG section if you want to take a look.

To actually buy cards in Japan, the best place to get them from is probably the actual Pokémon Centers. Sometimes you get special promotional gifts when you buy X yen worth of goods, and sometimes they sell exclusive products that you can't get from non-PC stores. There are a number of Pokémon Centers across Japan, and they have a new website that offers domestic (read: within Japan only) shipping.

In terms of price, Japanese booster boxes are much cheaper than their English counterparts. A single Japanese booster box for a regular set costs ¥3240 (approx. £20) at MSRP, or ¥2550 (~£16) from AmiAmi. However, they do contain fewer cards than English boxes. A Japanese booster box contains 20 packs and each pack has 5 cards. You have about a 50/50 chances of getting a pack 3 Common and 2 Uncommon cards or 3 Common, 1 Uncommon, and 1 Rare/RR/SR/UR card. Pull rates are generally better in Japanese sets than in English, but you do get fewer cards overall, primarily fewer C/U cards. Also, all Rare cards in Japanese are holo, there are no non-holo rares.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask! :D

For what it's worth, I'm also a European that collects Japanese cards.
 
Athena said:
AmiAmi is one of the best websites to buy Japanese Pokémon TCG stuff from. They sell for less than MSRP, and they even ship internationally so you don't even have to worry about having a middleman ship you stuff. Here is their Pokémon TCG section if you want to take a look.

To actually buy cards in Japan, the best place to get them from is probably the actual Pokémon Centers. Sometimes you get special promotional gifts when you buy X yen worth of goods, and sometimes they sell exclusive products that you can't get from non-PC stores. There are a number of Pokémon Centers across Japan, and they have a new website that offers domestic (read: within Japan only) shipping.

In terms of price, Japanese booster boxes are much cheaper than their English counterparts. A single Japanese booster box for a regular set costs ¥3240 (approx. £20) at MSRP, or ¥2550 (~£16) from AmiAmi. However, they do contain fewer cards than English boxes. A Japanese booster box contains 20 packs and each pack has 5 cards. You have about a 50/50 chances of getting a pack 3 Common and 2 Uncommon cards or 3 Common, 1 Uncommon, and 1 Rare/RR/SR/UR card. Pull rates are generally better in Japanese sets than in English, but you do get fewer cards overall, primarily fewer C/U cards. Also, all Rare cards in Japanese are holo, there are no non-holo rares.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask! :D

For what it's worth, I'm also a European that collects Japanese cards.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for the link! Sites pretty cluttered but hopefully can make sense of the pokemon section soon haha

Yeah the new website is great, I put in a preorder for the Kanto badge set! :)

Thanks for such a concise breakdown for the booster boxes, definitely going to order a couple today!

Only question now - is this basically what i'm looking for when trying to get a box?
'Expansion Pack Akai Senkou 20Pack BOX(Released)'
There's just a crap ton of stuff for order and since they don't have any kind of sorting system I don't want to order the wrong thing haha

It's relieving to already know of someone who collects Japanese cards from the beginning, hopefully it all makes sense to me soon. Hope you don't mind if I pester you again if I get confused :)
Thanks again for your help, really grateful! :)
 
I'm always happy to help! :D

When you see a "20 Pack Box" that refers to a booster box, yes. The price should generally be about ¥2550 as well (special sets, like PokéKyun, are usually more expensive). It helps if you learn a little bit about the Japanese names of the products you're looking to order. Like your example, "Akai Senkou" is the romanization of Red Flash, which is half of the XY8 set (the other half being Aoi Shoudou/Blue Shock).

For AmiAmi in particular, newer stuff tends to be towards the front, and product gets older as you go back. Items that have been recently released also usually get bumped towards the top again and are shown above pre-order items.

It does look a bit confusing if you're not used to it, but when you get into the habit of ordering and going to the site fairly frequently, you'll learn to mentally filter and it'll get easier for you as time goes on. :)
 
Awesome, thanks for the breakdown :)

Yeah Ami is making more sense now - sucks I can't order PokeKyun from there since it's just over the value to get customed for the UK, guess i'll just pick that up with a middleman.
I just realized though, do all Japanese releases have 1st edition releases? Iirc the US/EU stopped doing that years ago
I just realized the PokeKyun release has different pressings according to the internet (which sucks since now I have to find that haha) just hoping this doesn't apply to every release x__x
 
Yes, Japanese releases still do separate 1st Ed./Unl. runs. If you pre-order you're basically guaranteed to get 1st Ed. cards, but if you wait for later purchasing, you might get Unlimited cards, depending on how well the sets sold. I know Emerald Break went into Unl. fairly quickly.

And, yeah, customs kind of sucks. Most releases I've found that I sneak under the customs limit so long as I order boxes to be ship individually, but sometimes that's an issue with the special releases. For example, the upcoming Premium Champion Pack is ¥3950 for a single booster box. T_T PokéKyun was under the limit for here at least. Too many special releases this year...
 
HarlemThorne said:
I just realized though, do all Japanese releases have 1st edition releases? Iirc the US/EU stopped doing that years ago
Click to expand...

Wizards of the Coast produced 1st editions from Base Set to Neo Destiny. When Nintendo took over they decided not to produce 1st Edition cards anymore.
Japan didn't always have 1st Edition releases, it started with Pokemon VS and has continued ever since. From a TCG perspective not having 1st edition cards is not a big deal but from a collectors perspective it would be nice if they still did it because it would give older collectors an incentive to collect newer sets.
 
HarlemThorne said:
Awesome, thanks for the breakdown :)

Yeah Ami is making more sense now - sucks I can't order PokeKyun from there since it's just over the value to get customed for the UK, guess i'll just pick that up with a middleman.
I just realized though, do all Japanese releases have 1st edition releases? Iirc the US/EU stopped doing that years ago
I just realized the PokeKyun release has different pressings according to the internet (which sucks since now I have to find that haha) just hoping this doesn't apply to every release x__x
Click to expand...

Hi! Just to give you a heads up that I recently ordered a PokeKyun booster box from Amiami (I live in the UK too) and the current price for the box is 3,140 yen and therefore not applicable for customs charges. You will have to pay VAT as usual (not sure if this is what you meant), but there should be no customs charges for you to pay.

Hope that helps!
 
Whitefinch said:
Hi! Just to give you a heads up that I recently ordered a PokeKyun booster box from Amiami (I live in the UK too) and the current price for the box is 3,140 yen and therefore not applicable for customs charges. You will have to pay VAT as usual (not sure if this is what you meant), but there should be no customs charges for you to pay.

Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

I think he is trying to not pay VAT as well. Just googled it and found some more information for myself. Thanks Whitefinch.

It seems like you don't have to pay the £8 for just VAT, I just want to make sure that is correct. In Canada, they at least used to, charge the handling fee when they collected the tax, total rip off.

Receiving mail from countries outside the UK
All mail that enters the UK may be examined by Customs. Normally letters, postcards and parcels containing only documents or similar forms of correspondence are excluded.
If you are receiving a parcel from a country outside the EU it may incur Customs charges. Any parcel assessed as being liable for Customs charges will also incur a Royal Mail handling fee of £8.
Any goods imported into the UK over the value of £15 are liable to import VAT. Gifts between private individuals over the value of £36 (£34 as of 1 January 2016) are also liable for VAT. Goods and gifts over these values may also be liable for customs duty. You no longer have to pay Customs duty for goods up to the value of £135, however you will still be required to pay import VAT and excise duty where applicable.
Please note these limits do not apply to alcohol and tobacco goods where both excise duty and import VAT may be charged. It is not permitted to send alcohol and tobacco products into the UK from another EU country unless prior arrangements have been made to account for the excise duty.
 
Whitefinch said:
Hi! Just to give you a heads up that I recently ordered a PokeKyun booster box from Amiami (I live in the UK too) and the current price for the box is 3,140 yen and therefore not applicable for customs charges. You will have to pay VAT as usual (not sure if this is what you meant), but there should be no customs charges for you to pay.

Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

Thanks for replying to this bit, useful to have some advice on it from a UK'er
Yeah sorry I meant VAT too haha, how much were you charged in total to be able to get it? The last time I ordered something over the £15 limit, I think I had to pay something like an £8 fee to the post office which made it cheaper to buy things like this through a middle man x__x
 
Ahh got a customs fee on the 2500 box, ridiculous

Looks like i'll have to stop using amiami before it even started, middle man service it is lol
 
Best way is to order a single box on the cheapest shipping it never gets checked and goes straight through if you use any type of tracking not just EMS they look they scan and bang there's your charge. If you are doing single boxes one at a time and u can wait 2-4 weeks go untracked and your fine everytime atleast I have been. However on new sets I cant stand waiting that long so have taken the hit this time order was £95 I know for a fact I will get a £13 handling fee and pay around £18 VAT it does suck but then the cards are such better quality and if something did go wrong I can claim on the insurance kind of makes it ok in my eyes as usually sets are every 3/4 months saving all my loose change negates the shipping haha!
 
HarlemThorne said:
Thanks for replying to this bit, useful to have some advice on it from a UK'er
Yeah sorry I meant VAT too haha, how much were you charged in total to be able to get it? The last time I ordered something over the £15 limit, I think I had to pay something like an £8 fee to the post office which made it cheaper to buy things like this through a middle man x__x
Click to expand...

Sorry for the delayed reply but I only got my box yesterday - I chose SAL shipping which is cheap but really slow!

For some reason I didn't have to pay any VAT (or customs) on the parcel. It was just... delivered. I've never ordered directly from Japan so I don't know whether this is unusual or not!

EDIT: Just seen @Stu4488's post above mine - it must have been the SAL shipping. That's awesome. I don't mind waiting so I'll be ordering more from AmiAmi! :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top