Japanese Baseball Cards

While I don't live in Japan, I've lately started using KuboTEN.com, a proxy bidding/shopping service I found, to order baseball cards from Yahoo Auction Japan. They are the first such service I've seen that doesn't charge a major up-front fee to establish an account, and have pretty reasonable commission & shipping fees. However, I wouldn't recommend use any proxy service if you're just buying singles (unless they're high dollar cards or you buy a LOT of cards) as the commissions would likely cost you FAR more than the card is worth.

Along those lines, can anyone recommed some online Japanese card shops? I've found http://www.wing-24.com and The Mint stores have their own sites, but the Mint stores only seem to have the most recent stuff available.

Well, Mint is a series of actual real stores here in Japan... and they vary from shop to shop on how much old stuff they have (and in how aware their storekeepers are of it), so that might be why they only really focus on the new stuff. I found a fantastic bunch of boxes of 1970's Calbee cards in one of the further out Mint stores once, but like, the ones closest to me have pretty much nothing before the 1990's, so YMMV.

I wonder if I should bring some of my extra cards back to the US with me when I visit this winter and try to ebay them off. Huh. See, my thought is that there wouldn't be a lot of people interested in cards of random players who aren't stars and all.

Deanna, something you might consider (if you have cards you want to be rid of) is CheckOutMyCards.com. They're a consignment site, where you pay a small up front fee and send them your cards, and they scan them and enter them into your own "store" where you can set the prices. Once they're in the system, you no longer have to deal with packaging and shipping and whatnot, COMC takes care of all that.

However, they're pretty much limited to whatever Beckett includes in their catalog. I tried submitting some old 1976 Mitsuya discs, but even though I included a list of what they were, they're sending them back...along with a couple Konami Field of 9 cards.

You might have some luck with selling stars, though. And I've yet to see anyone selling the Bikkuriman seals on eBay

Can you tell on the Mint website, down under the section where it says Mint-Single, are those just product update blogs for the individual stores?

The two most established sites for buying Japanese baseball cards internationally are Rob's Japanese Cards and the Yakyu Shop.

Yakyu Shop has a very limited selection and they don't sell singles. Rob, though I have bought a handful of cards from him, hasn't updated his site since his last book came out. With both sites, if you order packs or boxes, you're still paying what you would if you ordered directly from Japan through a proxy service.

Add in Prestige Collectibles, and I still get the feeling there are some very large inventories these folks just aren't putting online. So far, Yahoo Auctions is about the only place I've had any luck finding deals or even being able to search a very large selection of products.

8 years after Ichiro & Company made such a big splash in the MLB scene, I'm surprised the English market for Japanese cards is still limited to three websites and a handful of regular sellers on eBay. I suppose Beckett's lack of coverage is probably a major factor, as they've greatly limited the exposure of the Japanese products to the North American market by completely ignoring them.

The way I used to get cards was to trade American cards to Japanese who would send me Japanese cards.

Even Japanese who don't collect baseball cards will send you cards once you establish a friendship. Many Japanese want to practice their English communications skills with real Americans.

Also, I have many extra cards but mostly pre-2000.

That leads right into another questions I've had: are there any online trading forums of Japanese baseball card traders, similar to TheBenchTrading.com or SportsCardForum.com? How do you find Japanese collectors to trade with? Currently my only real experience with someone overseas for cards has been a couple of large orders I've made with a guy in the Philippines. I guess I was surprised at how readily available Japanese cards were there.

yeah - in Asia there are Japanese Department stores like Justco and Seibu.

Just go to penpal forums and start making friends. Even if they are not collectors they will send you cards if they establish a friendship with you and you are genuine!