Tell me what's wrong with this picture:

[Pete Klein]

Purchase price (auction isn't over yet) + bidding service fees + transportaion cost to you + transportation to repair + fee for repair (must be done by a master = $$$) + transportation back + agent fee for paper + paper fee + transportaion fees... I would much rather find one intact and pay more as it's possible you will end up paying more to go through all of the above and possibly not get a good result. Or you just leave it as is (proably the best way to go) and chalk it up to 'Wabi'! LOL

[Curran]

Forget not that now many of Yahoo!Japan sellers are professional dealers. Visit enough websites and you will recognize items over time.

Also, seems perfectly fine for many of the dealers to shill their own auctions and pull them with only a few seconds left if not happy with the price. "Tortise", "Megatora" & "Fuji5005" (he has multiple Fuji IDs), and a few others have made it a rigged auction.

 

And forget not the sellers who bid up in increments of 100 yen to price discover what your maximum bid is...

So you bid once on something and someone else bids 57 times to push it up to your max and then suddenly stops.

 

Yahoo!Japan auctions are a lot more dangerous now than they once were. The 3rd party fees make it mostly a losing game now.

[Pete Klein]

I am a firm believer that they have rigged the system to know what your highest bid is as I've seen it happen too often where the bidding majically stops just under my bid. I think they have a back door into the system somehow as it is impossible to be simple chance.

[Justin]

Interesting you say that. I have had the same experience. Perhaps they have an arrangement with the proxy bidding companies or can hack into their systems to find the max price (Japanese Shopping Mall, Buyee, etc).

[Pete Klein]

I have a feeling that either the sellers are given the bidding ammounts or they are hacking into the system. It would be too difficult to coordinate with all the agents and too great a risk of the government stepping in. In any case it's important to understand that this isn't easy and takes a lot of experience to keep from getting you now what-ed.

[Justin]

Some of them offer sniper bids. This might be better. I usually set a max. price I'm prepared to pay and put that in anyway.

[Grey Doffin]

Snipes usually don't make much difference with these auctions. They have auto extension; every time a bid is placed more time is added to the auction.

Grey