P-Bandai

References : /toy/ Robot Damashii General,  /toy/ Toku General, /a/ buyfag guide. I visit /toy/ and /m/ gpg sometimes
Take everything with a grain of salt
I.Getting Started

1/ I have seen anons mentioned P-Bandai all the times, but what exactly is it? And why they don’t ship outside of Japan?

To quote  Derringer ( A Blue-fin’s employee)

>P-Bandai is a market place option for various entities, primarily Bandai departments and related companies like Megahouse to sell certain types of merchandise. There's a number of different shops within P-Bandai including Tamashii Web Shop, Hobby Online Shop, etc. The phrase P-Bandai is used primarily by Western consumers(*) to blanketly refer to anything that is sold on this market place platform. Not all items sold on the P-Bandai site are actually exclusive or limited, but the items that have gained the most recognition happen to be. When people mention P-Bandai in the context of GunPla, they are usually referring to the Bandai Hobby Online Shop, which sells a number of items you can only buy through the shop, but not at regular retailers including Yodabashi or AmiAmi or Amazon, etc.

(*)Japanese fans call it PreBan (プレバン) but whatever

Bandai never told us exactly how they choose items to be P-bandai or why they don’t ship outside of Japan, you can find various explainations anons came up with on /toy/ and /m/.

2/ I saw an exclusive item sold out on Big In Japan/Nippon Yasan/MyKombini,etc. Why do made-to-order toys even sell out?

P-Bandai only allows 6 of an item/account (Depend on items , I have seen SHFs that allowed up to 24, you can check this directly on P-Bandai site), assuming your seller has 10 accounts, after 60 people placed their orders it will “sell out”. Most of the time you can still find it up for preorder on p-bandai itself, so find a different proxy service and try again.

I learned this during the Astrea type F pre-order period, I asked my friend in Japan to get it for me since it was sold out everywhere and she told me it was opened for a week.

II.Where to buy P-Bandai Exclusives?

A.Sellers and Proxy Services

1/ Nippon Yasan (Pre-order)

Many anons use this site for exclusives, simple and easy to use website. They usually offer the lowest prices for exclusives, this is balanced out by them charging a higher shipping costs which often results in you paying the same or more. For exclusives they require full payment upfront for the item and shipping cost. If somehow they still undercharged you for shipping they will ask for more. Their customer service is generally agreed to be terrible. They automatically undervalue, which helps you to avoid taxes if you live in EU/UK and AU recently with GST. Their packaging can be pretty bad.

Only use them for pre-order, they don’t actually stock anything old despite their site saying otherwise. AVOID buying in stock at all costs unless you really want to pay rape price for an used item you can find cheaper somewhere else.

2/Big In Japan (Pre-order and Forwarding/Proxy Service)

Similar to Nippon Yasan but they offer slightly higher prices with better shipping rates. I haven’t personally contacted their customer service but according to the /a/ buyfag guide “It will take a very long time to receive a response to an email, if they ever do”. If you want them to undervalue you have to write the specific amount in the comment section.

I haven’t tried out their proxy and forwarding service.

3/Mykombini (Pre-order)

I started using them recently for exclusives. They offer good prices with okay shipping rates, they will refund if they overcharged you for shipping. They don’t carry everything so better try your luck somewhere else (unrelated to RD but they didn’t carry a bunch of precure/Kamen Rider SHFs so I had to order them through Zenmarket). They also list their new products at very weird times so you have to be checking the main page constantly. They automatically merge your orders in the same month, if they somehow decide to push an item in an order to the 2 nd batch their site will likely to fuck up your order. This happened to me once which resulted in them sending me an invoice with negative value. Their customer service is reliable but pretty slow, it took them 2 weeks to solve said fuck up by sending me a new invoice. They only require 50% deposit upfront but you can pay for your order whenever you want. Their packaging is okay, not terrible but not as good as amiami . They undervalue if you ask them in the comment section.

4/ Zenmarket (Proxy service)

Their price is usually : (Price listed on P-Bandai + 625 yen inland shipping fee +  300 yen + 3.35% on the points transfer fee)(1) + (Shipping) (2). They require you to pay (1) upfront, then (2) when the item arrived at their warehouse. After 5 parcels or so shipped to you they will give you 20000 yen credit so you can pre-order without paying (1) upfront. They respone and place your order pretty slow, many /m/ anons got their Woundwort cancelled because of this, not sure what happened next. Their packing is good, and they also undervalue.

5/ProxyRabbit Japan

They respone very fast ( I placed my order at 9:00pm in Japan and they responded me immediately after that). Very low upfront deposit, you can choose between 20%, 50% and 100%. In land shipping is pretty much the same as ZenMarket but they have much steeper fee and it will likely end up being 12% in the end. Don’t know if they undervalue or not.

I haven’t tried the following shops out but they are recommended by anons form RD General
1/Anime Export (Pre-order)
2/From Japan (Proxy)
3/Tatsu Hobby (Pre-order)
4/Rider Proxy (Proxy)
5/http://hobbyjapan.ocnk.net/ (For Toku stuff only)

Can also try out this list by /a/ buyfags thread
http://buyfags.moe/Proxy_and_forwarding_services

B.Pre-owned shops
1/Amiami’s pre-owned section
Prices depend on the after market value, but in my experience they are usually higher than Mandarake, though you can use air mail to balance it out. B and B+ pretty much mean new. If an item is actually damged they will put a product’s note , this used to be in red but since the new site is broken it will show something like <font color=red><b>[Discoloration] White painted area [Missing] Cover part on the back of backpack, base for weapons, supporting pole for weapons (large)</b></font>
2/Mandarake
The usual go-to for pre-owned items, prices and custome service depend on which shops you buy from. Everything is new unless there are pictures that show the damage. Pay no attention to the “Packaged heavily damaged”. Mandarake shops except Sahra and Grandchaos undervalue, but they automatically mark it as gift, packaging depends on shops.
3/Jungle.
I bought from them once but they charge 5% handling fee so be aware of that. They undervalue.