Searching for an item, where to look next?

[AbaZ33a]

So I’ve been trying to find a certain TOMIX extension set with no luck thus far. The set in total has 4 parts which has been already proven to be nightmare but I’ve managed to find all segments but one. I’ve looked on Yahoo! Auctions, Ratuken, eBay and plugging in the item in on general search engines but I’m still unsuccessful. Is there any place that I should try next that I’ve missed? The item in question is TOMIX 92266. 
https://www.tomytec.co.jp/tomix/products/n/92266.html

[Kiha66]

Tomix add on set 92266 was produced in 2006, so about 15 years ago now!  You may have to wait a bit for one to come up on the used market, but I'm sure if you're patient one will appear.  Yahoo! Auctions is generally the best place to find this kinda out of production stuff.   I've bought though buyee but there are other purchasing services out there once it shows up on an auction site.

[cteno4]

I’ve spent years lurking for some items and a lot of the time, with time it appears! Just have to be very patient…

 

jeff

[disturbman]

Add-on sets can be difficult to come by by themselves as people often sell them again with the base set.

 

The best is to set an alert on Yahoo Auction so you can receive an email notification when an item corresponding to your search terms pop up.

 

Maybe also check Hobbyland Pochi. They are specialized in second hand sets, you would have to ask RGR or MTP to buy it for you as they don’t sell overseas.

[Kamome]

As other members mentioned, these things come in waves. Say Tomix announce a new 700-3000 set, next thing, people are selling their older models. 

 

As @disturbman said, these things do come up from time to time but a 3 car add on set from 15 years ago may have been incorporated into a full or half consist. Be prepared to find it but get some additional coaches as well.

 

This is certainly the challenge with manufacturers like Tomix who produced this in 2x 3 coach sets and 2x 5 coach sets. If you don’t get everything when it’s released, it’s unlikely to find it a couple of years later.

 

Hobbyland Pochi sell individual coaches but their online site doesn’t include this. Be patient and you never know. Sounds like a trip to post Olympic Japan is needed to get cars 8,9,11 amongst other things. 

[disturbman]

2 hours ago, Kamome said:

Hobbyland Pochi sell individual coaches but their online site doesn’t include this.

No, and that's really unfortunate. I would love to have a good way to source single cars as they are - I think - usually overpriced on YJA. But their website has a good number of sets that you cannot find anywhere else, it's possible they would sell those add-on sets individually if they come by.

There are also a number of big shops that sells older bundled *junk* cars on YJA that could be a way to find the missing cars.

[inobu]

19 hours ago, AbaZ33a said:

So I’ve been trying to find a certain TOMIX extension set with no luck thus far. The set in total has 4 parts which has been already proven to be nightmare but I’ve managed to find all segments but one. I’ve looked on Yahoo! Auctions, Ratuken, eBay and plugging in the item in on general search engines but I’m still unsuccessful. Is there any place that I should try next that I’ve missed? The item in question is TOMIX 92266. 
https://www.tomytec.co.jp/tomix/products/n/92266.html

Your only chance is to look off the beaten path. When I was looking for unitram stuff I started looking at the shops that had no or limited internet presence. I was able to find a few hard to get pieces.

 

Here is a good link for shops and a good visual reference.

 

 

Inobu

 

 

 

[cteno4]

Inobu,

 

how did you contact those shops? Any language issues? How willing were they to exporting items? Just curious about the small shops as at times, like you mentioned, they have can have some of the more unique items like etched metal bits and such.

 

jeff

[inobu]

22 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Inobu,

 

how did you contact those shops? Any language issues? How willing were they to exporting items? Just curious about the small shops as at times, like you mentioned, they have can have some of the more unique items like etched metal bits and such.

 

jeff

 

These types of shops may have the item because they have a weak internet presence. The key is finding the shop that is transitioning to sell

online.  The little odd and ends will be hard as it had little profit incentive verses a big ticket items.

 

This is one of the video's that gave me the idea of the virtual shopping. I started actually looking for the items as the video panned. In my case it was Kato stuff.

I went to the contact dealer page and started to hit those sites on their Kato's Japanese site. I ended up in Kawaguchi which happened to be ModeltrainPlus. They shipped

so it was easier. That gave me the idea to look at the non-internet shop locally. I found a few other pieces.

 

You will get the sorry we don't ship but you just keep going. That is how I found all of the Unitram track sets. 

 

Here is an example of a non-internet shop. (Not a strong web presence)

 

http://www.meiwamokei.com/Tetudo_Top.htm

 

They have Hot Sheets of their stock.

92266 is on the list but is out of stock. The slash means out of stock.

http://www.meiwamokei.com/tomix_n_ho.htm

 

It is a hit or miss but it is the only alternative.

 

Inobu

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by inobu

[cteno4]

LOL that system brought you back to Nariichi San! BTW if you do find something at a shop that won’t export, Nariichi will do personal shopping and ship items to you in these odd situations for a small fee.

 

I did similar searches on the internet and Japanese hobby magazines way back to find some odd bits looking at the shops with just a “here we are” web site. Found a couple that way.
 

Did you email in English or Japanese?

 

ah the old hot sheets, reminds me of the old rainbow ten days! Actually is a very good alternative for a small shop that does not want to invest the time and money into a big inventory and web solution. Just update the excel with purchases thru the day and just upload it. Isn’t a fancy front end but fine for those who know what they want. Merchant systems can be a negative investment for some, couple of clients went down the rabbit hole ans wished they hadn’t but after the large investment of time and money they just suck with it even when they were not liking it and actually taking more time for them, but it’s that human reaction.
 

jeff

[Kanpai Keith]

Good luck,  you can always start a rumour that Tomix are re-releasing the set prompting a selling spree 🤣🤣🤣

 

I’ve been trying to hunt down decals for my Kato 253 Narita Express.  11-386 .

[AbaZ33a]

After months of waiting the entire set came up for sale, I was about a minute away from winning when the seller removed all of my bids and then got a message from Zenmarket stating “the seller does not participate in proxy services”. I might aswell give up…

[disturbman]

Yes, that’s not uncommon. At least buyee does usually not let you bid on items from sellers that do not want to sell to proxies. I still don’t understand why people would refuse to sell to proxies/foreigners. A sell is a sell.

Edited July 28, 2021 by disturbman

[roadstar_na6]

Two negative feedbacks to the seller's account hopefully make him think about it next time... had that happen to me as well, really saddening.

[cteno4]

3 hours ago, disturbman said:

I still don’t understand why people would refuse to sell to proxies/foreigners. A sell is a sell.

Really? Risk and extra time investment is a problem with a sale that could end up costing the seller money and the can thus make sells very different. I can see a seller only wanting to sell in country to avoid issues with customs, language, international shipping (we now need to fill out a very long form and info has to get re-entered by hand at the post, with nasty glares from the line), potential different import/export laws, and what to do with a return if necessary (return shipping from the us can be really nastily high). A proxy service then adds dealing with a third party intermediary (proxy service) that could mess things up in a number of ways. There are a lot more risks to the seller. The sale is really to the proxy bidder so then if there is an issue you have to get the proxy service to deal with an issue and not sure how their policies work on this with the proxy services.

 

I can see the seller not looking at the bidders all the time until near the end and they see it’s now all proxy bid and canceling them if not comfortable with them. The best approach is to be up front about it in the auction so folks just don’t bid using proxies and warned if proxy service bids canceled.

 

add to this that most auction services have been leaning a lot more towards the buyer’s side in the last few years, you end up with sellers wanting to minimize risk as if there is an issue the deck is more stacked against them.
 

does yahoo auctions have any rules on proxy services? How does buyee determine a seller doesn’t accept proxies, just in description or auction flag in yahoo?

 

jeff

[disturbman]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

Risk and extra time investment is a problem with a sale that could end up costing the seller money and the can thus make sells very different. I can see a seller only wanting to sell in country to avoid issues with customs, language, international shipping (we now need to fill out a very long form and info has to get re-entered by hand at the post, with nasty glares from the line), potential different import/export laws, and what to do with a return if necessary (return shipping from the us can be really nastily high).

Fair points, but this does not apply here. When dealing with a proxy, the seller only has to send them the package. For them, the sell is exactly like any other domestic sale. They do not have to deal with customs and overseas shipping. The proxy takes care of all the rest.

 

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

How does buyee determine a seller doesn’t accept proxies, just in description or auction flag in yahoo?

I think they have a database of sellers that refuses to sell to them, which is updated from experience. I had twice a sell that was canceled by the seller due to the service being a proxy and/or some negative reviews. I think one of these has since been removed from the list of sellers you can bid on. I only saw once a seller mention in the item description that they would not sell to a proxy. It is however quite common for sellers to mention they will cancel the sell if the buyer as negative reviews.

[cteno4]

59 minutes ago, disturbman said:

Fair points, but this does not apply here. When dealing with a proxy, the seller only has to send them the package. For them, the sell is exactly like any other domestic sale. They do not have to deal with customs and overseas shipping. The proxy takes care of all the rest

I was taking you literally there with the /foreigners part for the other points as folks get upset when folks won’t export

 

I can see sellers Leary of proxies as if there is a problem was it created by the proxy (the actual buyer), or shipping to actual buyer or by the actual buyer. If there were any return it could take a long time after being shipped overseas and then back and I assume thru the proxy service again as they would need to deal with anything as the actual buyer. Perhaps sellers have had some issues in the past with proxy sellers and now just Atwood the pain/risk/cost it may have given them in the past. Just out of curiosity I wonder what the reputation is of the proxy buyers on the sellers’ end in japan is, we only ever hear/see the buyers’ end.
 

do proxy services just say you are SOL once they get the item and it looks ok? I actually never gave this issue a lot of thought with proxy buying until now (I’ve tried hard not to succumb to a new pathway to Japanese model trains…). They don’t run train and such or may know if small parts are missing. I assume the proxy service leaves the server feedback as well.

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

On 7/28/2021 at 10:23 AM, disturbman said:

I still don’t understand why people would refuse to sell to proxies/foreigners. A sell is a sell.

Part of that is the closed nature of Japanese culture. There was a time when some companies in Japan would not sell to people not in there immediate circle, even if they were Japanese. Many times new customers would need an introduction from an establish customer. Even in North American that wasn't totally unheard of in days gone by.  It's kind of the opposite of Japanese not wanting to break off business relationships even if the venture isn't a success. That was part of the reason why Meitetsu's 600 volt  lines lasted so long. Didn't want to break off relations with the towns along the line. 

 

Edited July 29, 2021 by bill937ca

[Kamome]

I would also suggest that a lot of items are not returned in Japan.  I don't know whether there is a sense of avoiding confrontation or they just put the experience down to "live and learn," and move on.  Yahoo auctions, afaik, don't have the same protections for buyers as sites like ebay. 

 

You also have to remember that most Japanese people don't get the regular exposure to different cultures and mentalities that other countries have. I agree, that this is something that should be rectified. However, many would shy away from selling to us, demanding, it better be perfect or else, western buyers in favour of selling to domestic, generally won't complain, Japanese buyers.  My wife used to cringe when I would haggle photographic equipment prices in electrical stores as it just isn't the culture. (Kitamura Camera would always sort me out with a good deal btw, but that was some years ago.)

 

As @cteno4mentioned, the risk of shipping overseas, with unknown factors that you have limited to no ability to contact or find out whether things have been received. Japanese shipping companies are impeccable plus keep their databases up to date in real time where the parcel is.

 

Once the item is sold domestically, there is very little headache for the seller.

 

We also don't know how the Proxy services deal with sellers. Their protection looks after their customer (buyers) but we don't know how nice they are to deal with on the other end. Who takes the hit if things are not as expected? For a business, it may be worth the risk to sell overseas, but for individuals, you'd sell to the market you know.

[Kamome]

15 hours ago, roadstar_na6 said:

Two negative feedbacks to the seller's account hopefully make him think about it next time... had that happen to me as well, really saddening.

 I would also add that negative feedback would probably exacerbate the problem rather than fix it. 

[Englehart]

I use dejapan for it(proxy services) if you find the item in a non proxy site you can ask them to buy them for you

 

all my items are bought via Buyee and Dejapan 🙂

[Kiha66]

As a (part time small scale) seller, my experience from the US shipping overseas has me not wanting to repeat the process.  It is significantly more work with lots of paperwork and time at the post office, and much higher risk of loss.  I'd rather not sell and item than have to ship overseas, unless I know the buyer and that's more as a personal favor.  

 

 

[roadstar_na6]

I wonder what all this paperwork is. If I ship something to the US I have to fill out the basic shipper/recipient thing and add a list of what's in the box, how much it weights and what it's worth.

[cteno4]

Not sure what triggered it but bout 5 or 6 years ago they started to phase out the nice little cute customs tag that required little to fill out and they did not enter the data into the system at all for lower priced stuff and gifts. But then they basically said you now had to do the LONG form for anything. It is long and lots of confusing boxes to check about your exporter status on the items which can be confusing. It’s basically 2 big pages. I remember when I had a $1000 package I was shipping to a friend in Australia and they made me do one for the first time and I thought well I’m not doing that again, and then they started phasing out the cute little green slips (they did let you still use them for like a year but didn’t have any out but I had a little pile in my drawer I used up until they said no more).

 

you can fill out the form on the usps website and it creates a pdf to print out, but the system use to hiccup a lot and you would be 3/4 thru and bam it would lock up! Even then you would expect it would have a barcode on it that would point to the data in the system, but no, the guy at the post office has to enter it by hand into his computer… like kiha, I avoid shipping overseas now when I can.

 

jeff

[disturbman]

Now, I see where you are coming from. As Jan said, we only have to fill that small custom slip. It takes less time than entering the addresses and definitely less time than packing anything.

 

And since I do everything online, I just have to drop off my package or arrange a pickup. Process is almost effortless.

Edited July 30, 2021 by disturbman