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  #181  
Old Oct 16, 2021, 06:15 PM
Rrolack Rrolack is offline
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Does it seem to anyone else like the sale of really rare and desirable albums has fallen off a cliff since the pandemic started? I haven’t been buying much VGM lately, and this seems like the reason why.
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  #182  
Old Oct 25, 2021, 09:10 AM
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Yoshi's Island OST (only the obi and stickers, NO DISC OR BOOKLET); 50,000 yen; https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/c912497016
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Originally Posted by seanne View Post
This one is funny.
This one's now even more funny since a recent complete copy sold for 83,600 Yen (including obi, reg. card, sticker and sales tax )

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp...on/q1013479935
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  #183  
Old Oct 30, 2021, 07:50 PM
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By the way, if anyone has a Sankyo Orpheus Final Fantasy VII music box that you’re willing to part with, if you reach out to me I’ll make you a very serious offer.
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  #184  
Old Oct 30, 2021, 10:40 PM
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VGMdb - serious offers only
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  #185  
Old Oct 31, 2021, 07:30 AM
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Considering there were only 100 made and they typically go for 5 figures on the rare occasions they come up for sale, it would need to be a serious offer. I don't have one, but I wish you luck on your search.
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  #186  
Old Nov 21, 2021, 08:53 AM
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One album which hasn't been explicitly mentioned yet is Hoshi no Kirby ~Yume no Izumi no Monogatari~ / Mako Miyata. A complete copy sold today for 156,000 yen (YJA link). Incomplete copies also regularly go for 100,000 yen.

This album is pretty hard to find complete, and it's for an iconic game, so I'm not surprised by the high price.
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  #187  
Old Nov 24, 2021, 03:57 PM
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I used to have that album, but I sold it several years back. Whenever I see it listed at 50,000 yen or under, I get interested in trying to reacquire it, but the price quickly shoots out of range. It's definitely the album I most regret selling.

I made a CD-R copy while I had it, so I can listen to the music whenever I want to, but I still long to get the original once again.
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  #188  
Old Nov 25, 2021, 09:37 AM
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Originally Posted by Crash View Post
I used to have that album, but I sold it several years back. Whenever I see it listed at 50,000 yen or under, I get interested in trying to reacquire it, but the price quickly shoots out of range. It's definitely the album I most regret selling.
I think the price of all VGM is up pretty substantially since this thread was made back in 2011, and even over the past few years. Things are more expensive than ever.

To be honest, if you re-bought the album for 90,000 or 100,000 yen, even though that price sounds ridiculous for a CD, I don't think you would lose money on it if you ever wanted to sell.
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  #189  
Old Dec 5, 2021, 03:04 AM
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Well, after all these years I've finally come across someone selling the Guilty Gear XX Λ Core: Secret Gig CD, but surely this has got to be some kind of joke, right? I mean there's no way someone would seriously buy it for 980,000,000 yen, that's beyond outrageous.
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  #190  
Old Dec 16, 2021, 01:57 PM
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Some of the usual suspects took a real step up in price as of lately. Super Mario RPG for instance was never cheap as long as I've been collecting VGM. But it basically doubled it's price in just three months. I perceived this one as a 50,000 Yen max. title for quite a while but since some months you can't find a complete copy for less than 100,000 Yen
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  #191  
Old Dec 16, 2021, 02:40 PM
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Terranigma has also doubled in the past few years. Used to go for around 15,000 but now it's usually more like 30,000. Fingers crossed that revival campaign is successful and it gets a reprint
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  #192  
Old Dec 16, 2021, 05:34 PM
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On the other hand, the Ganbare Goemon albums seem to have tanked in price big time. They’re pretty affordable now. Not sure why.
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  #193  
Old Dec 16, 2021, 05:39 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rrolack View Post
On the other hand, the Ganbare Goemon albums seem to have tanked in price big time. They’re pretty affordable now. Not sure why.
Probably because of all the counterfeit Goemon albums that are all over Yahoo Japan Auctions. No one can trust whether the listing is a legit copy or not anymore, so no one's willing to drop that kind of cash on something that could be a bootleg.
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  #194  
Old Dec 16, 2021, 08:19 PM
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That's the reason I've given up on getting either Goemon N64 soundtracks at this point, difficult to tell if it's counterfeit, and it's possible for online sellers to use stock/stolen images from a different copy, so it's a significant risk.

I've also been checking occasionally for some of the prices, just out of curiosity
The higher prices for Mario RPG seemed to come out of nowhere.

What I find strange is that more copies than usual have been showing up for sale for some of the more valuable CDs.

I know Ebay is one of the worst options for buying soundtracks and usually isn't great for pricing but I'm just using this as an example

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...ound+in+action

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...+soundtrack+cd
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  #195  
Old Dec 16, 2021, 08:25 PM
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Wow yeah, those Ebay prices are insane. I remember when I was looking like maybe a year ago and they were around $600-ish, not $1000-2000+
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  #196  
Old Dec 17, 2021, 09:44 AM
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Apart from a few handful of exceptions, I don't have much confidence with the Japanese sellers on eBay.
  • They often have atrocious feedback.
  • Use bad quality blurry low resolution photos (almost as if they imported them from Yahoo).
  • You see the same items (whether it be music CDs, video games or guitars) with the same photos copy-pasted between multiple user IDs.
  • They also often have multiple thousands of items at any given time so it is not likely you will be taken care of with a personalised customer service. According to some of the buyer feedback, some sellers have zero communication at all (probably because they can't understand English so it's better to just ignore buyer emails).
  • The condition descriptions are vague and the bare minimum at best (e.g. This is a used item and has scratches.) and incorrect at worst (e.g. just from the photos, I can tell those albums are not "like new"). I can understand for low value items but I would expect at least a little bit of effort for the expensive items.
  • The cherry on top is that the items are priced barely competitively at best or completely ridiculous at worst.

Also, these multiple thousands of items all are placed on different backgrounds and surfaces so I can only assume they don't actually personally have the items physically on hand and they're using a program or a bot or something to import these items from elsewhere. I can confirm that some are directly from Yahoo. So everything is just automated, the prices, the photos, the conditions etc. Just set and forget. As a seller, it might be a pretty good way to make money without putting in too much of your own time and effort, but as a buyer I would completely avoid due to a high chance of potential issues.

Now that I think about it, one may consider this to be basically the Japanese version of dropshipping?
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  #197  
Old Dec 23, 2021, 09:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Porter View Post
Probably because of all the counterfeit Goemon albums that are all over Yahoo Japan Auctions. No one can trust whether the listing is a legit copy or not anymore, so no one's willing to drop that kind of cash on something that could be a bootleg.
I looked into this more, and found a few auctions whose descriptions can tell you how to tell the difference between real and fake copies. See the descriptions of these auctions:

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r346815980
https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n398990519

Looking at past sales, I see that 3 of the last 4 sales of KICA-7800 are fakes! The real one sold for 70,000 yen (without obi), and the 3 fakes sold for around 25,000 yen each (all with obi). So it seems that real Ganbare Goemon albums are still really expensive, and it’s the presences of fakes that makes the average price look depressed.
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  #198  
Old Dec 24, 2021, 11:20 AM
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It seems like the best way to avoid fakes is to not buy ones without CD matrix photos, since AFAIK you can't really fake those without setting up your own press exclusively for pressing bootlegs. Although Discogs is the only site I know of where they actually catalog those outside of the few albums here with photos of them.
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  #199  
Old Dec 24, 2021, 05:37 PM
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so this one is fake and this one is real??
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  #200  
Old Dec 24, 2021, 05:56 PM
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Originally Posted by LuxKiller65 View Post
so this one is fake and this one is real??
Yes, correct
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  #201  
Old Dec 24, 2021, 06:26 PM
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how to tell? the spinecard even has those pre-cut dotted lines. color looks a bit off but for sure i can't come to a conclusion with those 3 photos
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  #202  
Old Dec 24, 2021, 07:16 PM
Rrolack Rrolack is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LuxKiller65 View Post
how to tell? the spinecard even has those pre-cut dotted lines. color looks a bit off but for sure i can't come to a conclusion with those 3 photos
Here is how to tell. For KICA-7800, here are two clear points of difference:

1. On the obi, the yellow bars and the blue field behind the bars are too tall. On the real version, the bars and blue field are shorter.

Fake:


Real:


2. On the front cover, the font for ORIGINAL GAME SOUNDTRACK on the fake version is different. If you look below, for example:
  • The font on the fake version is thinner than on the real version
  • The S on the fake version is much wider than on the real version, as compared to the height of the letter
  • The cross on the T of the fake version slopes upward, on the real version it is level

Fake:


Real:



If I look at the YJA archive on aucfan.com (which requires a paid subscription), almost all of the albums sold in the past few years are fakes, which is incredibly sad.

Last edited by Rrolack; Dec 24, 2021 at 09:38 PM.
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  #203  
Old Dec 24, 2021, 10:16 PM
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dammit i missed that, you are right the font is completely different. so they recreated the cover instead of using a high res scan of an original booklet.
that is no incredibly easy to spot, until they come up with a better fake.

did not think japan would end up like this. guess it was only a matter of time.
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  #204  
Old Jan 15, 2022, 07:01 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by layzee View Post
Apart from a few handful of exceptions, I don't have much confidence with the Japanese sellers on eBay.
(snip)
Now that I think about it, one may consider this to be basically the Japanese version of dropshipping?
Absolutely, eBay is flooded with Japanese sellers / bots who copy Mercari / Yahoo / Rakuten listings and just add a hefty markup.
Their bad feedbacks are mostly due to items going out of stock although their eBay listing is still up when a buyer bites.
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  #205  
Old Mar 5, 2022, 05:30 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alcahest View Post
Absolutely, eBay is flooded with Japanese sellers / bots who copy Mercari / Yahoo / Rakuten listings and just add a hefty markup.
Their bad feedbacks are mostly due to items going out of stock although their eBay listing is still up when a buyer bites.
Looks like your mercari listing has been taken off (it was active when I checked when you posted your post). Sometimes listings on there get completely removed instead of just ended so there's no historical reference. Not sure what the mechanics is behind that.

Anyway, here's a great example of Yahoo drop-shipping:

Super Donkey Kong OST on Yahoo:
https://home.exetel.com.au/layzee/te...6SDKyahoo.html

The same album sold by three different (?) sellers on eBay, with a hefty 100% markup:
https://home.exetel.com.au/layzee/te...6SDKebay1.html
https://home.exetel.com.au/layzee/te...6SDKebay2.html
https://home.exetel.com.au/layzee/te...6SDKebay3.html

And here are examples of atrocious eBay feedback:

https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/cafta59
https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/masashi06
https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/japamart

How is a user with a confirmed 14 sales even able to list 2000 items? Because these days eBay has new seller limits and they only give you like 200 concurrent listings max.
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Last edited by layzee; Mar 5, 2022 at 05:33 AM.
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  #206  
Old Mar 6, 2022, 06:06 AM
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Wow, I got scammed on ebay as well, and only found out years later thanks to this site.
I avoid buying soundtracks on ebay since then. I make only exceptions when the soundtrack is dirt cheap (and not rare at all).

Worst part: sometimes innocent sellers are selling bootlegs and were scammed themselves and simply do not know. I contacted a few selling Silent Hill soundtracks (their own collection) and removed the auction after I told them and were very upset that they got scammed originally as well.

For Japanese soundtracks I go suruga-ya whenever possible. It seems they know what they are doing and don't sell bootlegs or other crap and the condition is almost always like new, sometimes I even get sealed copies despite them being sold as used.

I got one very rare soundtrack (for a movie) though from yahoo auctions. Only given out for people who visited the cinema for that movie 20 years ago and it took me years to find a copy that was okay-ish price-wise.

Last edited by Jimi; Mar 6, 2022 at 06:10 AM.
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  #207  
Old Mar 21, 2022, 08:43 AM
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We've discussed that Kirby album before but just for the record one sold for over 200k Yen today.

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp...on/r1042817277
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  #208  
Old Mar 21, 2022, 05:49 PM
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At least it looks to be in pristine condition - only the obi seems slight bent in places. But damn, 200k.
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  #209  
Old Mar 25, 2022, 03:04 AM
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i be eating ma popskorn
2 hours left
https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp...on/o1043188433
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  #210  
Old Mar 25, 2022, 10:32 AM
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Pretty hefty price in the end. I'll stick with the CD version then which even has more tracks than the vinyl
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