Beware of Japanese eBay cross-platform 'proxy' re-sellers !
Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 9:23 am
E-commerce is a truly wonderful thing, but it can also be an absolute minefield for the novice buyer, particularly when it comes to recognizing that certain watches listed on eBay by Japanese sellers may not always be what they seem.
Apart from the problems of translating Kanji, Japanese culture has always been different, particularly when it comes to buying online. The preferred domestic sales platform for selling secondhand watches is, without doubt, Yahoo Japan Auctions, although there are other options. which allow fixed price listings, like Rakuten and Mercari (of more anon).
There is no longer any such thing as eBay Japan. The US e-commerce giant never really managed to establish a foothold. See extract below from this blog article which gives the timelines:
The Japanese eBay URL still exists, but only as selling portal blog, offering advice to sellers: https://www.ebay.co.jp/
One of the tools eBay subsequently created to facilitate this (and also overtly infiltrate Yahoo Japan, via the back door) is the Sekaimon interface:
Even to this day, this cross platform selling device serves to confuse many an experienced eBay / Yahoo Japan user.
One of the primary exponents of this semi-automated eBay tool is Yahoo Japan 'Store' re-seller salttotheworld_2008. They currently have over 284,000 eBay items (none of which belong to them) listed on Yahoo Japan !! In the past, they've often quite justifably been accused of being scammers, as in this thread on SCWF dating from January 2020.
I've been trying, without success unfortunately, to find the thread on the old archived forum, where I made this post:
Although the number of eBay items listed on Yahoo Japan by salttotheworld_2008 has increased by over 100,000 since I made that post in April 2019, thankfully the number of Seiko 7Axx's included among them has diminished significantly. Currently they have only one 7A28 and two 7A38's listed on Yahoo Japan (both owned by a less vigilant US eBay seller). It's academic anyway, because they'll never sell. The US eBay seller is asking the same Buy-it-Now price: $499 for both, which frankly is far too much given their non-original condition. Whatever mark-up algorithm salttotheworld_2008 has chosen, that factors out to 82,107 Yen on Yahoo Japan, but because they're a 'Store' seller, you'll also need to add 10% Japanese Sales tax, making a total price each of 90,317 Yen - equivalent to approx. $825 !!
At this point, it would be remiss of me not to mention Yahoo Japan profiteering re-seller swotlab, whose activity has provided me with a great deal of amusement over the years. He's definitely an 'old school' dealer. He bids on and buys Seikos (usually from eBay.com) imports them to Japan and lists them on Yahoo Japan as auctions, with their opening bid prices suitably marked-up from what he'd paid, usually having done nothing more than take his own set of photos. These always follow a standard format, that he still uses to this day, comprising a single photo of the watch, head-on diagonally and another composite 'collage' image of usually six more photos. His usual stock in trade was what I would call 'low end' 7Axx's, which he often purchased from Filipino eBay sellers, so he sometimes had difficulty selling them for a profit. He currently has over 200 Seiko's listed on YJ, but I can't remember seeing him list a 7A38 in a long time.
Nowadays, with the ever-increasing demand for JDM 7Axx's, from 'Gaijin' Seiko collectors, the traffic usually goes in the opposite direction: from Yahoo Japan to eBay.com. I've already written about profiteering US eBay re-seller rtm127, who appears to be trying to corner the market in 7A28-7090 Yacht Timers, in this thread in the 7A28 model section.
He may be greedy, but in hogging the market for desirable JDM Seiko's coming out of Yahoo Japan Auctions, there is none more loathsome than profiteering cross-platform Japanese eBay re-seller jap_t_t_w (Finish off later).
Then there's the other less than scrupulous kind, which I refer to as the 'proxy' re-sellers. The way they operate is that the Japanese eBay re-seller steals (there is no other word for it) the photos from the original bona fide seller's listing (be it on Yahoo Japan or wherever). Then, presumably without asking permission of the seller, they create their own listing on eBay.com using those photos, often as not a 'generic' description, usually pricing the watch as a Buy-it-Now in $ US at double (sometimes even three times) the original seller's Yen equivalent price. If any mug punter is foolhardy enough to buy their 'borrowed' over-priced item off eBay, they rapidly purchase it from the original seller, which can sometimes take up to a week to arrive, then forward it on, to their buyer and casually pocket the difference.
This distinctly under-handed activity been going on for literally years, unchecked by eBay who, keen to rake in as much commission on sales as possible, by whatever means, fair or foul, are evidently conveniently turning a blind eye to it.
Here's a post I made in reply to a thread on SCWF, over 2½ years ago.
Thankfully, utsun_2014 seems to be no longer active. fe-shop-japan still are, but haven't dabbled in 7Axx's in a while.
Others include: ys-variety, japanese_mountain_stream, japan_awesome_deals_kens and oriental-vintage-modern.
japan_pre-owned_vintage is now the pre-eminent 'proxy' Japanese re-seller of 7Axx's. Not content with just eBay.com, in parallel, they create duplicate listings, in local currencies, across multiple eBay domains, for even greater visibility.
A couple of relative newcomers that I've been keeping my eye on are: jp_watch_mania and nice-watch-jpn. Observant readers may have noticed from my recent post in the ongoing thread about the re-sprayed 7A38-7140, they were one of the would-be profiteering re-sellers to jump on the bandwagon.
Apart from the problems of translating Kanji, Japanese culture has always been different, particularly when it comes to buying online. The preferred domestic sales platform for selling secondhand watches is, without doubt, Yahoo Japan Auctions, although there are other options. which allow fixed price listings, like Rakuten and Mercari (of more anon).
There is no longer any such thing as eBay Japan. The US e-commerce giant never really managed to establish a foothold. See extract below from this blog article which gives the timelines:
The Japanese eBay URL still exists, but only as selling portal blog, offering advice to sellers: https://www.ebay.co.jp/
One of the tools eBay subsequently created to facilitate this (and also overtly infiltrate Yahoo Japan, via the back door) is the Sekaimon interface:
Even to this day, this cross platform selling device serves to confuse many an experienced eBay / Yahoo Japan user.
One of the primary exponents of this semi-automated eBay tool is Yahoo Japan 'Store' re-seller salttotheworld_2008. They currently have over 284,000 eBay items (none of which belong to them) listed on Yahoo Japan !! In the past, they've often quite justifably been accused of being scammers, as in this thread on SCWF dating from January 2020.
I've been trying, without success unfortunately, to find the thread on the old archived forum, where I made this post:
Although the number of eBay items listed on Yahoo Japan by salttotheworld_2008 has increased by over 100,000 since I made that post in April 2019, thankfully the number of Seiko 7Axx's included among them has diminished significantly. Currently they have only one 7A28 and two 7A38's listed on Yahoo Japan (both owned by a less vigilant US eBay seller). It's academic anyway, because they'll never sell. The US eBay seller is asking the same Buy-it-Now price: $499 for both, which frankly is far too much given their non-original condition. Whatever mark-up algorithm salttotheworld_2008 has chosen, that factors out to 82,107 Yen on Yahoo Japan, but because they're a 'Store' seller, you'll also need to add 10% Japanese Sales tax, making a total price each of 90,317 Yen - equivalent to approx. $825 !!
At this point, it would be remiss of me not to mention Yahoo Japan profiteering re-seller swotlab, whose activity has provided me with a great deal of amusement over the years. He's definitely an 'old school' dealer. He bids on and buys Seikos (usually from eBay.com) imports them to Japan and lists them on Yahoo Japan as auctions, with their opening bid prices suitably marked-up from what he'd paid, usually having done nothing more than take his own set of photos. These always follow a standard format, that he still uses to this day, comprising a single photo of the watch, head-on diagonally and another composite 'collage' image of usually six more photos. His usual stock in trade was what I would call 'low end' 7Axx's, which he often purchased from Filipino eBay sellers, so he sometimes had difficulty selling them for a profit. He currently has over 200 Seiko's listed on YJ, but I can't remember seeing him list a 7A38 in a long time.
Nowadays, with the ever-increasing demand for JDM 7Axx's, from 'Gaijin' Seiko collectors, the traffic usually goes in the opposite direction: from Yahoo Japan to eBay.com. I've already written about profiteering US eBay re-seller rtm127, who appears to be trying to corner the market in 7A28-7090 Yacht Timers, in this thread in the 7A28 model section.
He may be greedy, but in hogging the market for desirable JDM Seiko's coming out of Yahoo Japan Auctions, there is none more loathsome than profiteering cross-platform Japanese eBay re-seller jap_t_t_w (Finish off later).
Then there's the other less than scrupulous kind, which I refer to as the 'proxy' re-sellers. The way they operate is that the Japanese eBay re-seller steals (there is no other word for it) the photos from the original bona fide seller's listing (be it on Yahoo Japan or wherever). Then, presumably without asking permission of the seller, they create their own listing on eBay.com using those photos, often as not a 'generic' description, usually pricing the watch as a Buy-it-Now in $ US at double (sometimes even three times) the original seller's Yen equivalent price. If any mug punter is foolhardy enough to buy their 'borrowed' over-priced item off eBay, they rapidly purchase it from the original seller, which can sometimes take up to a week to arrive, then forward it on, to their buyer and casually pocket the difference.
This distinctly under-handed activity been going on for literally years, unchecked by eBay who, keen to rake in as much commission on sales as possible, by whatever means, fair or foul, are evidently conveniently turning a blind eye to it.
Here's a post I made in reply to a thread on SCWF, over 2½ years ago.
Thankfully, utsun_2014 seems to be no longer active. fe-shop-japan still are, but haven't dabbled in 7Axx's in a while.
Others include: ys-variety, japanese_mountain_stream, japan_awesome_deals_kens and oriental-vintage-modern.
japan_pre-owned_vintage is now the pre-eminent 'proxy' Japanese re-seller of 7Axx's. Not content with just eBay.com, in parallel, they create duplicate listings, in local currencies, across multiple eBay domains, for even greater visibility.
A couple of relative newcomers that I've been keeping my eye on are: jp_watch_mania and nice-watch-jpn. Observant readers may have noticed from my recent post in the ongoing thread about the re-sprayed 7A38-7140, they were one of the would-be profiteering re-sellers to jump on the bandwagon.