As someone who owns quite a few figures I feel like I can pass on some of my experiences over the last few years on to others who may be just starting out or curious about the hobby.
So to begin where to buy figures from. Before I actually start telling you where to buy from I’ll start out by saying DO NOT BUY FROM eBay! eBay is full of fakes from China. You may go on and find a figure for £10 on auction that is worth £60 but chances are that when it arrives it will be a fake. I made this mistake myself when I first started buying figures when I purchased a BRS “Figma” for £15. Now you may think I don’t care if it’s fake as long as it looks good. Think again. Fake figures have bad designs and terrible defects. The fake figure I own spontaneously falls to paces and looks really shoddy in comparison to the real one.
Here’s the fake
Not only does the colour of the hair and eye flames look faded but you might also note that the joints seem too long. Not too mention the fact that every time I pick it up it falls in 2 pieces.
Here’s the legit one
Notice the extra attention to detail and the fact that I can actually pose it without it falling to fucking pieces.
OK rant over about fakes. Another site that I’d generally avoid is PlayAsia. Whilst all the products are legit they charge far too much for both the figures and the shipping. Generally a figure from PlayAsia will cost you £20-£40 more than from elsewhere.
So where do I buy from? From my experience the best place online is amiami.com The site is in English and the prices are reasonable with decent shipping costs to the UK. You can also preorder figures and not pay for them until they are ready to ship. There’s also 1999.co.jp/eng/ Which everyone tells me is good and cheap but I have no experience buying from them myself.
The only problem buying online is the customs charges. Here in the UK they charge you 20% VAT and a £8 handling fee. That’s right they charge you £8 for them seizing your parcel. If a Figure costs 10,000 yen you’re looking at roughly £20 worth of tax charges (robbing bastards). Of course parcels don’t always get seized but in my experience 90% of the time they do. Now you can avoid this by going through a 3rd party proxy which basically involves sending your parcel to some company in Japan who’ll then send it on to you as a gift. I’m pretty sure that this is illegal and I’m no lawyer so do it at your own risk (I’ve never heard of anyone being done for this).
Now if you want to avoid buying online you can either buy from a shop like Tokyo Toys in London (Pricy) or one of the weird obscure shops in London or Manchesters China towns (these shops are hard to find but cheap). Alternatively you can attend a convention like MCM, LAC or any other anime con. These cons have lots of dealers selling lots of figures, but beware. There are a few unscrupulous dealers who sell fakes. (see http://www.mcmexpogroup.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=235&t=10574) The worst part is that, at MCM at least, the staff don’t want to know and won’t take action against a dealer selling fake figs (I’ll save my rant about MCM staff for another time). So if you’re buying from a con try to ensure that the figure is genuine. This can be difficult but don’t be afraid to ask to look at the figure and if it’s second hand ask for the dealer to get it out of the box. It’s also worth pointing out that figures at cons can be more expensive than buying online and paying both shipping and custom charges so always do your maths.
I hope this will help people and you can of course always go onto the buyfag thread on 4chans /a/ and read the guide there if you want to know more.
Anime Tech and Touhou 