What did you RECEIVE today? PHOTOS EDITION!

PACKAGE ARRIVAL
「week start ver.」

🎮 VIDEO GAME 🎮

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Had to order this as an alternative. A Amazon seller messed up my Switch counterpart by sending a Day One Edition instead of Collector's Edition 😒 (as seen in the previous post)

PACKAGE ARRIVAL
「week midpoint ver.」

💿 ANIME 💿

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🎮 VIDEO GAME 🎮

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I'm not the kind of person to have regrets. Though not willing to bite the bullet with this pre-order back in the day, cause I found game Collector's Editions were increasing high in price. Though thinking back, Resident Evil was my childhood especially with RE2 leaving an massive impact on me (almost PTSD 😁). The Remake may not be perfect but I also like this new version. After getting RE3 + RE8 CEs I knew I had to find a way to grab RE2 CE by any means.

I got it finally, after waiting a long time and waiting for a price somewhat close to the original. I already stored the set safely away but forgotten to capture a photo hence why I posted the official one instead.

In conclusion, a Resident Evil enjoyer
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My two copies of the Target-Exclusive Belle Steelbook arrived in the mail today. They were shipped tightly together inside just a small, flat bubble bag with no other padding inside, but amazingly, both steelbooks actually arrived in pristine condition. 🥳

I had ordered two copies because I planned on at least one of the copies being detroyed in shipping. Guess I under-estimated their well-known poor packing! So, looks like I'll have an extra copy to scalp, after they're OOP, lol... ;)

The steelbooks have a shiny, brushed finish, and they are still in the shrinkwrap, so they did not photograph so well, and don't look nearly as nice here as they are in person:

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May 2022 Batch 8!


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It had taken a while and a lot of bad luck, but I have now finally received my Buyee/Mercari package from Japan; Crows: Burning Edge [クローズ BURNING EDGE], MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA [メルティブラッド:タイプルミナ] and Wing of Darkness [有翼のフロイライン].

Crows: Burning Edge is an action beat em up based on Hiroshi Takahashi's 1990 manga Crows, which did receive a few live-action films by Japanese directors Takashi Miike and Toshiaki Toyoda. The game was released in 2016 and was published by Bandai Namco.

MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA is a 2D fighting game continuation to the MELTY BLOOD franchise, which is a spin-off of TYPE MOON's Tsukihime visual novel series. The game has English support which is a surprise given Type Moon is generally Japan only on their Japanese releases (though Witch of the Holy Knight will also have English support which is neat).

Wing of Darkness is an action mecha game which is more on the low budget shorter indie type side of things than your big Ace Combat or larger projects.

This order started on Monday 2nd May with 5 games chosen for one big order. As Solaris Japan had to postpone orders due to shipping services unavailable (caused by Putin invading Ukraine), I had to look elsewhere for imports that had more variety of games available, so I revisited Buyee. Things started off well with a lot of good bargains and finding a copy of MELTY BLOOD which was bizarrely hard-to-find as it didn't get any stock once it was released last September.

Then things start to go from good luck to bad. Starting with placing the orders, during checkout I had the option to pay via PayPal which is no problem - except the usual pop-up where you need to login and choose which card to use did not appear. My initial reaction was it'll be paid later, until I received a text from my bank stating I was in overdraft. Turns out Buyee got the payment done via my bank card, which was a problem because I use my funds on another - fortunately it was paid in GBP otherwise I would have been hit by bank charges but it still sucks that I didn't get them sorted through Monzo. I was able to get it done through Monzo directly but even that alone didn't get the order paid in Yen so I still ended up paying more than I should.

The cause of the payment botch was because I previously used Buyee for a Yahoo! Auction order back in September 2019 via PayPal, before I changed my approach on online orders. Then if that wasn't bad enough, Buyee took too long to get the orders completed, so one of them ended up getting cancelled. And then despite having another order completed and paid, it got cancelled "due to the convenience of the seller". Apparently Mercari sellers like to cancel orders to charge more or recognise that the address is a forwarding service and decide to cancel it because they don't want to ship it out to importers.

And the icing on the cake - I missed out on the coupon that allowed a discount on international shipping because the items took too long to arrive to the Buyee warehouse. In the end, I was able to consolidate the order so instead of paying about £20 per item it was £45 overall with extra packaging protection and the Buyee fees. The war situation did affect Buyee's shipping options but the 4000 Yen choice ended up being FedEx so it shipped late Tuesday and arrived today, which was nice to see.

The items arrived in the end and were working at least. MELTY BLOOD was the priority of the bunch, and the two games that got cancelled on me were A Certain Magical Virtual-On and City Shrouded in Shadow (Kyoei Toshi). The plus side is that those two games are more readily available so I can try again later down the line.
 
May 2022 Batch 8!


bwmKTCxh.jpg
bItOWkuh.jpg
Nyr95YZh.jpg

It had taken a while and a lot of bad luck, but I have now finally received my Buyee/Mercari package from Japan; Crows: Burning Edge [クローズ BURNING EDGE], MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA [メルティブラッド:タイプルミナ] and Wing of Darkness [有翼のフロイライン].

Crows: Burning Edge is an action beat em up based on Hiroshi Takahashi's 1990 manga Crows, which did receive a few live-action films by Japanese directors Takashi Miike and Toshiaki Toyoda. The game was released in 2016 and was published by Bandai Namco.

MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA is a 2D fighting game continuation to the MELTY BLOOD franchise, which is a spin-off of TYPE MOON's Tsukihime visual novel series. The game has English support which is a surprise given Type Moon is generally Japan only on their Japanese releases (though Witch of the Holy Knight will also have English support which is neat).

Wing of Darkness is an action mecha game which is more on the low budget shorter indie type side of things than your big Ace Combat or larger projects.

This order started on Monday 2nd May with 5 games chosen for one big order. As Solaris Japan had to postpone orders due to shipping services unavailable (caused by Putin invading Ukraine), I had to look elsewhere for imports that had more variety of games available, so I revisited Buyee. Things started off well with a lot of good bargains and finding a copy of MELTY BLOOD which was bizarrely hard-to-find as it didn't get any stock once it was released last September.

Then things start to go from good luck to bad. Starting with placing the orders, during checkout I had the option to pay via PayPal which is no problem - except the usual pop-up where you need to login and choose which card to use did not appear. My initial reaction was it'll be paid later, until I received a text from my bank stating I was in overdraft. Turns out Buyee got the payment done via my bank card, which was a problem because I use my funds on another - fortunately it was paid in GBP otherwise I would have been hit by bank charges but it still sucks that I didn't get them sorted through Monzo. I was able to get it done through Monzo directly but even that alone didn't get the order paid in Yen so I still ended up paying more than I should.

The cause of the payment botch was because I previously used Buyee for a Yahoo! Auction order back in September 2019 via PayPal, before I changed my approach on online orders. Then if that wasn't bad enough, Buyee took too long to get the orders completed, so one of them ended up getting cancelled. And then despite having another order completed and paid, it got cancelled "due to the convenience of the seller". Apparently Mercari sellers like to cancel orders to charge more or recognise that the address is a forwarding service and decide to cancel it because they don't want to ship it out to importers.

And the icing on the cake - I missed out on the coupon that allowed a discount on international shipping because the items took too long to arrive to the Buyee warehouse. In the end, I was able to consolidate the order so instead of paying about £20 per item it was £45 overall with extra packaging protection and the Buyee fees. The war situation did affect Buyee's shipping options but the 4000 Yen choice ended up being FedEx so it shipped late Tuesday and arrived today, which was nice to see.

The items arrived in the end and were working at least. MELTY BLOOD was the priority of the bunch, and the two games that got cancelled on me were A Certain Magical Virtual-On and City Shrouded in Shadow (Kyoei Toshi). The plus side is that those two games are more readily available so I can try again later down the line.
Fun fact: Crows Zero 1 & 2 by Takeshi Miike were released in the UK by MVM!
Going by how hard it is to find a copy of the first one though they only made about 10 copies 😭
MVM rep if you've got one hiding in a box somewhere I'll buy it!!!
 
Then things start to go from good luck to bad. Starting with placing the orders, during checkout I had the option to pay via PayPal which is no problem - except the usual pop-up where you need to login and choose which card to use did not appear. My initial reaction was it'll be paid later, until I received a text from my bank stating I was in overdraft. Turns out Buyee got the payment done via my bank card, which was a problem because I use my funds on another - fortunately it was paid in GBP otherwise I would have been hit by bank charges but it still sucks that I didn't get them sorted through Monzo. I was able to get it done through Monzo directly but even that alone didn't get the order paid in Yen so I still ended up paying more than I should.
Has buyee ever charged in yen? I've never been able to change any setting that stops the auto conversion, which is significantly worse than the credit card conversion.

Even in the account settings, it only shows one option, to be charged in local currency, which for me is USD.

It's part of the reason I stopped using them. Another hidden fee to go along with a lot of other fees. It's just unfortunate that they're one of the very few proxy that can order from Mercari JP.
 
Has buyee ever charged in yen? I've never been able to change any setting that stops the auto conversion, which is significantly worse than the credit card conversion.

Even in the account settings, it only shows one option, to be charged in local currency, which for me is USD.
I honestly don't know as the last time I used Buyee was also done via PayPal which is normally via GBP. Though PayPal usually gives you the option to choose what currency you wish to pay in some instances. For Buyee it seems to be a fixed system so there's very little customisation. Even paying directly by card using Monzo which is what I did for the shipping part, it was still GBP so I suspect there's no option for Yen which makes no sense.
 
I honestly don't know as the last time I used Buyee was also done via PayPal which is normally via GBP. Though PayPal usually gives you the option to choose what currency you wish to pay in some instances. For Buyee it seems to be a fixed system so there's very little customisation. Even paying directly by card using Monzo which is what I did for the shipping part, it was still GBP so I suspect there's no option for Yen which makes no sense.
It makes a lot of sense. It's another hidden fee to add on to the user, which most won't really look into.

I tried going into Paypal and changing it to stop auto-converting but Buyee straight sends the charge to Paypal as USD.

Looks like it is roughly a 3.7% additional fee on their part, to gain on the conversion. They converted at 1 yen = $.0081 USD when the actual conversion rate is 1 yen = $.0078 USD
 
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In today's episode, I finally buy enough Bebop to last me a couple of lifetimes (still worth it for close to 200 pages of settei). I started with the Beez DVDs (the ones that opened funny), AL's CEs, Dybex's 20th anniversary and now this CE.

Ufomammut's latest in limited edition vinyl.

Waver's post-Zero adventures.

And another of Dybex's CE's: part 1 of Yamato 2199. A4 format with close to 350 pages of artwork spread across 5 books. Feels made with love and there's mechanical nerdness and detail for years.

Regret not getting part 2 immediately and being done with it - another 300 pages of artwork as well as the movie. That's close to 700 pages of artwork about a single series, that's gotta be some kind of record...
 
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