Yahoo! Auctions Japan and eBay get it on

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Yahoo! Japan, eBay Link Online Auctions Across Borders
posted on 2007-12-04 09:47 EST
Easier access to Japanese auctions for American bidders & vice-versa

Yahoo! Japan Corp. and eBay Inc. announced on Tuesday that the two companies will link their online auction services, and thus give American bidders easier access to Japanese auctions, and vice-versa. Although eBay is the dominant online auction service in many countries including the United States and Canada, it fell so far behind Yahoo's Japanese auction service that eBay pulled out of the Japanese market in 2002.

Yahoo Auctions Japan is best known in the anime/manga community for its wide variety of manga, anime, and character goods. As of Tuesday afternoon, it lists 14,592 Gundam items, 6,927 Naruto items, 4,796 Sailor Moon items, and 6,824 anime cels. For non-Japanese speakers who want to buy items on Yahoo Auctions Japan, a cottage industry of proxy buyers have sprung up in the last eight years. For a fee, a proxy service would handle all the bidding, payments, and overseas shipping for people living outside Japan. If Yahoo! Japan and eBay successfully execute their linkup plans, eBay will effectively become the proxy service for Yahoo! Japan, and vice-versa.

In the first phase, the two companies have already launched a website which will translate international eBay auctions into Japanese and help Japanese speaker deal with payment and shipping.

In the second phase that is scheduled for March, Japanese speakers can directly bid on international eBay items from within the Yahoo Auctions Japan website.

In the third phase that is scheduled for the middle of 2008, the two companies will launch a site by which American eBay users can directly bid on Japanese Yahoo auctions.

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source: Yahoo! Japan, eBay Link Online Auctions Across Borders - Anime News Network

so regarding the third phase since it is the only one remotely impacting us, are you excited? skeptical? how will this affect sellers stateside? can I finally get my anime cels without having my wallet torn open and my arse violated?

I think it is going to be interesting...but you still have two issues.
1) The larger international shipping fares which could be abused
2) Currency payment issues.

Will I be bidding in Yen or USD? Will the site (paypal) offer F(x) conversion free of charge or am I to pay for that as well? Will the site list the item in both the USD equivalent and the Yen one?

It's not going to make a difference. If anything, it will be an amazing hassle for the Japanese users:

-Most Japanese users don't WANT their items to be sold overseas. They can't communicate with the buyers and are uncomfortable with English. Yahoo Japan auctions already permits international users to buy things on the site, but at least 75% of the listers choose "No shipping overseas"

-Yahoo Japan's auctions are famous for being a buyer's market. ie. the prices are very low and Japanese users can get what they need on the used-market quickly for a decent price. Opening up the competition to e-bay (very much a seller's market) will encourage more "businesses" buying items from used stores and selling them en masse to eclipse single users selling their old items and will inflate prices across the board for buyers.

-There is already a marked dislike for ebay and anime conventions raping the Japanese fandom. Hunters from all over the world buy up cheap goods in Japan to sell in their own countries, leaving formerly well-stocked, low-priced shops with nothing but leftovers and creating an atmosphere in which shops can raise shops across the board. Check out Mandarake in Shibuya and Den Den Town now -- the prices have doubled in six years and the variety of goods available has plummetted... both shops are favorites of foreign tourists and e-pats re-selling goods. Having a system in which Japanese-speaking users can easily access the same audience creates a new potential for JAPANESE hunters to pop up and sell items overseas.

-If ebay is performing services for yahoo auction customers, they will no doubt be charging them their standard ridiculous markups and taking cuts from their sales.

-machine translation is crap... and since I highly doubt ebay will be hiring REAL translators to interpret every transaction, the quality of thier service is likely to be no better than running the page through babelfish then babelfishing email both ways.

I think it's a crap idea, really. All around.

O.o it does kinda suck for the Japanese consumer... but, it does take two to tango so i guess the ones in control don't really have a problem with it. i'm sure that the good sellers of the Japanese Yahoo! Auctions will find ways to protect their goods... but, as long as Japan makes itself open to Western consumers, the more this is going to happen...

Not to mention that every auction is basically a legally binding contract, and when it comes to different languages it will surely blur the lines and meanings. This could get ugly. I am looking forward to see how they can pull it off.

Whatever became of this, I think ebay finally teamed up with another company (not Yahoo) to produce auctions in Japan, I think it's called http://www.sekaimon.com/ But I also heard they are not nearly as popular as the Yahoo site.

I sell a Disney collectible (which I know would do well in the Japanese market). But apparently, I have to use the Japanese interface on Yahoo. They have a Beta version which translates everything into english, but it's only for buyers, not sellers.

Does anyone know how to list an item over there without hiring a bi-lingual to do all the work for you?

My art is at The Dental Art Connection-Amazing Animation Newsletter

Dead thread, Closing