Figures from Japan

What kinds of figures does the Japanese market actually sell?

The Japanese market sorts figures into distinct product classes, and the class decides where you buy it, what it costs and whether it was ever sold at retail at all. Prize figures, for example, are not retail products: they are distributed as crane-game prizes in Japanese arcades, which is why they reach collectors almost exclusively through the secondhand market. Knowing which class you are looking at is the single most useful thing before searching.

Which Japanese sites have which figures?

Stock is split across site types rather than pooled, so the same figure search returns very different results depending on where you look. New and pre-order stock sits with the specialist retailers; out-of-print scale figures, prize figures and lottery figures live on the consumer marketplaces because that is the only channel they ever reach.

How do I read a figure listing's condition and box state?

For figures, the box is part of the product, and Japanese listings describe the figure and the box separately. A figure can be flawless while the outer box is crushed, and the price difference between those two states is significant for collectors. These are the terms that appear in almost every listing.

• 新品未開封 — new, never opened
• 開封済み — opened, usually displayed
• 外箱傷み / 箱潰れ — outer box damaged or crushed
• 箱なし / 本体のみ — no box / figure only
• 欠品 — something is missing, usually a swappable part or a base
• ジャンク — sold as-is with known faults

What does shipping a figure from Japan cost?

Figures are the classic case where the scale lies. A boxed scale figure is light but bulky, so international shipping is priced off the size of the carton rather than its weight, and one large box can cost more to ship than several small ones. Two decisions change the total: whether you keep the outer box (collectors usually do, and should expect to pay for the volume) and whether you consolidate several figures into one carton at our Japan warehouse, which is where the saving is.

Estimate shipping with the OneMall calculator →

What should I type in Japanese to find figures on Mercari?

Start with フィギュア and add the distribution type or the line name — プライズ for crane-game prizes, 一番くじ for lottery figures, ねんどろいど or figma for the two best-known collectible lines. Japanese sellers write titles in Japanese and rely on a small set of recurring words, so these return listings an English-only search never reaches.

• フィギュア — figure, the base term
• ねんどろいど / figma — the two best-known collectible lines
• プライズ — crane-game prize figure
• 一番くじ — the lottery campaign, followed by the IP name
• 未開封 / 限定 — unopened / limited edition