Originally Posted by FadedSun
Okay guys, I need some help. I managed to find a copy of Shouso Strip on Yahoo Auctions. I set up a Japan Shopping Mall account, but the whole process seems overly complicated. I just want to buy this album. Is there any easy way to do that? I feel like this website doesn't make it easy for me to do that. I made a $10 deposit to set up my account, do I need to deposit more so I can actually purchase this?
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You could estimate that the necessary PayPal deposit is 22% of whatever you want to buy, if you're thinking of Yen as equivalent to pennies (100 per USD).
So hypothetically, if you were willing to Buy It Now a Shouso Strip LP for
22000yen, you would first need around $48 in deposits ($220 * 0.22).
You should also expect that your 'deposit' itself isn't far off from what you'll have to pay
beyond the oversimplified
§ auction price. So the final pre-shipping cost would actually be close to $268 ($220 + $48).
The shipping itself usually isn't so bad, especially if what you want isn't very heavy (next-to-nothing to move an LP within Japan, another $5 to move it internationally, and next-to-nothing for the last leg of the shipping from SMJ's US warehouse to you). It's when you're buying arcade machines or stacks of magazines, that the shipping costs become significant.
§: The main caveat when trying to estimate how much something would cost you from Yahoo! Japan Auctions, is that you're not actually paying 1 USD per 100 Yen - it's more like 92 Yen (because SMJ slants the standard exchange rate another 5 Yen in their favor - and the standard rate happens to be 97 Yen per USD right now). So 22000 Yen shouldn't be thought of as $220 to begin with - it's already $239.13 from the exchange rate, plus there's a $24 commission, a $3 wire fee, and there's shipping. That's where the "deposit-like" total of additional/hidden costs comes from.