I was talking to tantei today who runs the third party Augie Bookstore on Amazon, and wanted to point out the LB! deal to advertise his entire store. He started this store to help make rare and out-of-print visual novel (and anime/manga) items available at good prices for the US.
[15:39] <tantei> well personally I have been trying to make visual novels much more accessable
[15:40] <tantei> by importing them myself and posting them on amazon
These are some good prices:
^ Canvas 2 is second hand. [Amazon.com]
^ Never7 is second hand. No idea why Haruka no sora is so much. [Amazon.com]
Price explanatory text:
The thing is the prices he’s charging are marginal costs. so he is practically doing it for free.
For example, Little Busters Perfect Edition is selling for ¥6,408 on Amazon JP and ¥6,780 from Getchu.com (These are usually the two cheapest places). 6,408 yen in USD is $63.11. But he uses Tenso to import them which means 490yen in service fees and shipping fees using EMS to America is 1,200 yen for 300g item, which means the price of importing LB! perfect on your own would have been 8098 yen, or $79.75……… which means, he is selling it to you for cheaper than you could get on your own! (through Tenso anyway) Now Tenso fees scale better when you import in bulk…… but not by much (especially if you take into account the 200+300 in package consolidation fee). Which means his profit margins would be TINY. You could in theory go Yokattaweb.jp (slightly cheaper but more unreliable) which would bring up a total of 7,778 yen or $76.60, but going through Amazon is much more convenient and no need to do email correspondence. Compare JLIST prices of $115+shipping and Paletweb $110+shipping, a whooping difference of $39.That’s why I tell you it’s practically a voluntary service so I suggest you to take advantage of it. Now stocks are quite low but more copies of LB! perfect will come in his next shipment.
Of course, if you know how to order from Yokattaweb.jp, then you wouldn’t need to use the Amazon service but he’s making the amazon service available, which is great for the casuals. Because people don’t know how to or are scared of using mail proxies. And I don’t see why they are expected to. We shouldn’t expect anyone to have to use one.
[Visit Augie Bookstore on Amazon]
By the way he also does requests: [seller page] <—-see shipping fees.
Dat Haru-chin <3
[…] Screenshots: Consider buying Little Busters PERFECT Edition for $76 from tantei? But only If you can afford it. These are the cheapest prices possible for an import […]