lalalinkleThis is the story of how I obtained my number one holy grail; Hobby Figures 1/8 Scale Mugen (ITEM #283) from the anime Samurai Champloo! One out of two of my best boys
Once I discovered this figure existed, I became obsessed. But to my surprise, it did not appear on Yahoo Japan Auctions, Mercari Japan, Second hand on Solaris, JFigure, etc… It was nowhere to be found, not even eBay!
I commented on the post and reached out to the folks who owned it (I have learned now that this is not okay, sorry for bothering the folks who own this figure) but in that time I did find one single user who was thinking of selling.
We continued communication by email and he sent me pictures of Mugen, described the damage and I was okay with it and wanted to buy. But one day, two days, three days, a week, two weeks, a month pass and he no longer logs in and never responds to me again on email. Not sure what happened here but this was a major bummer.
I took to google, I searched for the figure in so many different ways. I reverse-image looked up several different pictures of Mugen, but there weren’t many official ones. I found some really sus website selling it for under $100 lol, a russian website, and a bunch of old listings from the stores that originally sold him for around 150 euros. One day when doing my daily obsessive search, I found a new google search result. It was a site called “ParuVendu” and it was all in french. Once I translated it, it explained that the item had some damage, the seller was asking 350 euros.
I sent messages every day for about a week with no response. Eventually I gave up but then after trying again I decided to reach out to their support and ask them if they have some sort of mechanism in place to allow only local IPs from sending messages to sellers. Same day I decided to try using a french proxy to reach out to the seller and buy the figure. I get no response from the proxy but the customer support confirmed that messages are only allowed within France.
So I asked on reddit and in the OurFigureCollection discord server to find someone who was french or lived in France and someone responded and was willing to help! I asked the person to tell the seller that I am interested but I am within the US, I wanted her to relay over a way for the seller to contact me (email, reddit, instagram, and twitter)
She messaged the seller and the seller responded almost immediately that unfortunately they are not willing to ship to the US. This person said they were moving out of France within a month so they couldn’t help.
And so I moved on to find another French friend, and found the most patient and kind person ever (SKERJ)!
I am glad I was able to find such a kind person for this, it was the most stressful purchase ever.
Well, she reached out to the seller, his name was Pikapika so I’m just going to refer to him as this from now on. Well she messages Pikapika and says she is interested in buying the figure, he then responds and says great. We negotiated the price to 215 euros and 6 euros for shipping. He agreed and we were happy. ALready celebrating.
But boy did things take a turn for the worst. I got a message from the proxy that they sent a message to the seller, this was like a 2-3 day delay! And then the seller started to get suspicious…
He told us that he finds it strange that it had been one year of him trying to sell this figure without any interest and then suddenly 3 people wanted to buy it. My desperation got me in a pickle! I told Skerj to explain to Pikapika the situation, that all 3 interested parties were me, and Skerj felt this was not wise, that he would no longer want to negotiate price and would see how desperate we are. So instead Skerj decided to say that she was buying the figure for a friend in the US. He then asked, “lalalinkle?” And she had to say yes at this point, so Pikapika knew that the first and third people were me, but didn’t know about the proxy.
So he continues to be suspicious of us, asking us a lot of probing questions, we respond all the time and then Skerj says I am her sister. He’s not really buying it but he says he will still sell us the figure. And that he would get back to us when he is less busy (about a week’s time) so we were back to happy.
Well, a week goes by and no message from him, he continues to ask us questions and thinks we will open up a Paypal claim and steal his money *facepalm* sigh it seems he is very cautious and this was going to be harder to convince him.
This drama goes on but eventually we once again agree, and he charges us. I wanted to pay with my paypal account (I actually used my boyfriend since I revealed my email to him when I first contacted him) and paid 221 euros. Well, he said he will ship soon. Then when he is preparing to ship he says he finds it strange that the address on the Paypal invoice is not there, and that this was important in case of a Paypal claim.
We try our best to explain that we will not open up a Paypal claim but he remains worried. He refuses to ship until we add the address. The address wasn’t added for a reason… Paypal is region specific, I can’t add a non US address with a US based Paypal account.
So once Pikapika decided that no address on the Paypal invoice was a deal breaker, he canceled the sale and gave us a refund.
I really didn’t want to have the burden of the Paypal transaction on Skerj, but she was kind enough to offer and that she could deal with a claim if we have to. So then what we did was she paid for the figure with her Paypal account and I sent her money via Paypal invoice as well since otherwise I would pay a really bad conversion rate ;--;
So she buys the figure for me, and he genuinely ships it! It arrived a bit more damaged as described, it seems that it got broken during shipment :(
I wanted Logistics to partially refund but since the box was not damaged then it was not their fault… Skerj and I agreed either buyer or seller had to take the L and I think it’s customary for the seller to take the L. So we asked him as nicely as we could to give us a partial refund, and he offered to give us 15 euros. While I think this is a bit on the low end I was okay with it. Skerj then prepped my shipment and it was a bit heavy so it was a total of about 63 euros… big OOF
But I paid and of course tipped Skerj (even though she adamantly disagreed) and am trying my absolute best to help her find and buy her grail <3
Finally, MUGEN ARRIVES he is here and in the exact condition Skerj photographed. While picking him up and touching all of his items, I accidentally broke the sword.. And then when trying to fix some breaks, I made new breaks. But it is what it is, overall he looks okay, his breaks exist but aren’t too bad. He is the most brittle and sensitive figure I have ever owned. Touching him gives me more anxiety than my AOT figures!!!
Here he is in all his glory
Well if you read all the way to this point, thank you! Hope you were entertained :D
Once I discovered this figure existed, I became obsessed. But to my surprise, it did not appear on Yahoo Japan Auctions, Mercari Japan, Second hand on Solaris, JFigure, etc… It was nowhere to be found, not even eBay!
I commented on the post and reached out to the folks who owned it (I have learned now that this is not okay, sorry for bothering the folks who own this figure) but in that time I did find one single user who was thinking of selling.
We continued communication by email and he sent me pictures of Mugen, described the damage and I was okay with it and wanted to buy. But one day, two days, three days, a week, two weeks, a month pass and he no longer logs in and never responds to me again on email. Not sure what happened here but this was a major bummer.
I took to google, I searched for the figure in so many different ways. I reverse-image looked up several different pictures of Mugen, but there weren’t many official ones. I found some really sus website selling it for under $100 lol, a russian website, and a bunch of old listings from the stores that originally sold him for around 150 euros. One day when doing my daily obsessive search, I found a new google search result. It was a site called “ParuVendu” and it was all in french. Once I translated it, it explained that the item had some damage, the seller was asking 350 euros.
I sent messages every day for about a week with no response. Eventually I gave up but then after trying again I decided to reach out to their support and ask them if they have some sort of mechanism in place to allow only local IPs from sending messages to sellers. Same day I decided to try using a french proxy to reach out to the seller and buy the figure. I get no response from the proxy but the customer support confirmed that messages are only allowed within France.
So I asked on reddit and in the OurFigureCollection discord server to find someone who was french or lived in France and someone responded and was willing to help! I asked the person to tell the seller that I am interested but I am within the US, I wanted her to relay over a way for the seller to contact me (email, reddit, instagram, and twitter)
She messaged the seller and the seller responded almost immediately that unfortunately they are not willing to ship to the US. This person said they were moving out of France within a month so they couldn’t help.
And so I moved on to find another French friend, and found the most patient and kind person ever (SKERJ)!
I am glad I was able to find such a kind person for this, it was the most stressful purchase ever.
Well, she reached out to the seller, his name was Pikapika so I’m just going to refer to him as this from now on. Well she messages Pikapika and says she is interested in buying the figure, he then responds and says great. We negotiated the price to 215 euros and 6 euros for shipping. He agreed and we were happy. ALready celebrating.
But boy did things take a turn for the worst. I got a message from the proxy that they sent a message to the seller, this was like a 2-3 day delay! And then the seller started to get suspicious…
He told us that he finds it strange that it had been one year of him trying to sell this figure without any interest and then suddenly 3 people wanted to buy it. My desperation got me in a pickle! I told Skerj to explain to Pikapika the situation, that all 3 interested parties were me, and Skerj felt this was not wise, that he would no longer want to negotiate price and would see how desperate we are. So instead Skerj decided to say that she was buying the figure for a friend in the US. He then asked, “lalalinkle?” And she had to say yes at this point, so Pikapika knew that the first and third people were me, but didn’t know about the proxy.
So he continues to be suspicious of us, asking us a lot of probing questions, we respond all the time and then Skerj says I am her sister. He’s not really buying it but he says he will still sell us the figure. And that he would get back to us when he is less busy (about a week’s time) so we were back to happy.
Well, a week goes by and no message from him, he continues to ask us questions and thinks we will open up a Paypal claim and steal his money *facepalm* sigh it seems he is very cautious and this was going to be harder to convince him.
This drama goes on but eventually we once again agree, and he charges us. I wanted to pay with my paypal account (I actually used my boyfriend since I revealed my email to him when I first contacted him) and paid 221 euros. Well, he said he will ship soon. Then when he is preparing to ship he says he finds it strange that the address on the Paypal invoice is not there, and that this was important in case of a Paypal claim.
We try our best to explain that we will not open up a Paypal claim but he remains worried. He refuses to ship until we add the address. The address wasn’t added for a reason… Paypal is region specific, I can’t add a non US address with a US based Paypal account.
So once Pikapika decided that no address on the Paypal invoice was a deal breaker, he canceled the sale and gave us a refund.
I really didn’t want to have the burden of the Paypal transaction on Skerj, but she was kind enough to offer and that she could deal with a claim if we have to. So then what we did was she paid for the figure with her Paypal account and I sent her money via Paypal invoice as well since otherwise I would pay a really bad conversion rate ;--;
So she buys the figure for me, and he genuinely ships it! It arrived a bit more damaged as described, it seems that it got broken during shipment :(
I wanted Logistics to partially refund but since the box was not damaged then it was not their fault… Skerj and I agreed either buyer or seller had to take the L and I think it’s customary for the seller to take the L. So we asked him as nicely as we could to give us a partial refund, and he offered to give us 15 euros. While I think this is a bit on the low end I was okay with it. Skerj then prepped my shipment and it was a bit heavy so it was a total of about 63 euros… big OOF
But I paid and of course tipped Skerj (even though she adamantly disagreed) and am trying my absolute best to help her find and buy her grail <3
Finally, MUGEN ARRIVES he is here and in the exact condition Skerj photographed. While picking him up and touching all of his items, I accidentally broke the sword.. And then when trying to fix some breaks, I made new breaks. But it is what it is, overall he looks okay, his breaks exist but aren’t too bad. He is the most brittle and sensitive figure I have ever owned. Touching him gives me more anxiety than my AOT figures!!!
Here he is in all his glory
Well if you read all the way to this point, thank you! Hope you were entertained :D
留言13
Haha right!? I was like yay!!! then awww then yay!!! then damn then yayy?? and then finally YAAAAAAy xD