Dakimakuras anyone?

Once again reading through all this just only makes me more and more upset at my, lack of income to be able to afford such things, my lack of living in the USA/not being able to order off of Japanese sites/auction site as easily as some, if not all you judging from the posts in here, and again... not enough money!!

Money is definitely the most important factor in hardcore dakimakura collecting, unfortunately. And even beginner collecting, as this shit's expensive. D:
The biggest problem with not living in the US is probably currency (if your currency is weaker than the USD) or if you wanted to use SMJ and take advantage of some of their better policies.

However, it isn't all bad if you're outside the US and have a fairly decent currency. ZengarZanvolt recently had some problems with YokattaWeb, but I'd still highly recommend them as a proxy service myself. Their auction rates aren't the most competitive, but their web store rates (which is where you want to buy covers if you can, as they'll be a lot cheaper than YJA) are probably the best. I actually just placed an order earlier today, and the total cost was retail +900 yen per dakimakura cover; which covers the commission, any fees, and shipping to their Japan office. I'll have to pay for shipping to the US later, but it's still a very reasonable commission.

I actually live in the USA (NYC). It's that one side of my family all live in Japan.

@Shashin
Doesn't 10% of item's final value add up to a lot?

If you're talking about Yokatta's commission, that only applies to auction (YJA) bids; their commission otherwise is 700 per 3 items, as long as it doesn't exceed the specifications. I've honestly never had it do so, and would image it's for bulkier items that take up some space.

But yeah, 10% can potentially be a lot, and that's why I usually use SMJ almost exclusively for auction bids. Their commission rates aren't always the cheapest, but their policies definitely make it a lot easier to spend money you don't have; 14 days to pay from the time they invoice you (when they receive the item in Japan for US customers) versus paying up front (like with Yokatta) and the batch shipping system to drive costs down a bit. There are some instances where Yokatta's 10% commission would probably be cheaper, but it honestly isn't worth the hassle to figure out and the couple bucks more I'd pay are more than worth it to have more time to pay. Yokatta generally has a pretty good response time, if it's a reasonable hour in Japan, so they're probably the better choice if you need to place a bid on something fast and can't do it with SMJ for some reason (adult auction, not enough spending limit, etc.)

But if you have a place in Japan and a bank account, then you don't really have to worry about proxies. :P

Edit: I don't believe I ever took pictures of my lovely Yasuomi-Craft Rin cover. So to resolve that, here you guys go:

That's a lovely Rin, besides the hair. Love her ass though, I wish the Evening Call dakimakura showed her ass. Thanks for sharing, I love Rin. (^∇^)

I sometimes use proxies despite having a place in Japan, as even though my relatives will say "No problem" being Japanese and courtesy, I don't really want to send stuff to their address often.


Just ordered a Damamuko 2wt dakimakura. I should get it by the 20th.

All proxies charge based to some degree on the final auction price, so they're all pretty expensive if the auction goes high. But Yokatta's is one of the worse ones for that yeah, I only use them for webshop orders which they are cheapest for (though as ZZ mentioned, make sure they charge you the correct price, they can be a bit dodgey on their price quotes) and tend to use sutocorp for auctions (though maybe I should be using SMJ now that currency exchange rates have shifted a lot).

I have a couple other Rin covers; I'll dig them out and post some pictures if you'd like. But for now, here you go (sadly censored):

http://pillow100.blog114.fc2.com/blog-entry-1442.html

I know Zengar posted some shots a lot of pages back (near the start of the thread, I think), but these are fairly detailed up close shots despite the censoring. It's still one of my favorite covers to this day, and I have both the Red/Blue Saber version.

gbatemper:

Yeah, that's understandable, I don't think I'd want to impose too much either. I'd probably just save it for smaller purchases (that usually cost a higher % of the total price) and the really expensive ones, if I had the option of relative/friends in Japan.

Following up a bit on what willowywicca said and I mostly covered in my previous post, I'd recommend Yokatta for web orders and (as you're in the US) SMJ for YJA, should you need to use a proxy versus having stuff shipped to your relatives.


Edit:
New Evening Call cover is colored. They need to hurry up and take Paypal so I can give them the money I don't have. On second thought... >_>

http://www.eveningcall.net/InformationDetail.aspx?NewsId=161

Wow. She's cute :3

She's from a eroge (Damamuko) I somehow managed to get it for 8000 yen, despite it being new and sold at c80 for 9500 yen.

Also pre ordered this, which is to come out on the 21st. I don't understand how hobbyheart already has it selling though, possibly they vectorized it?

Hobby Heart, from my understanding, sells only bootlegs. :(

But yeah, sometimes you'll get lucky and pick up a cover for less than the retail. I know BluRay has been lucky enough to pick up a few good ones that way. Sadly most of the covers I want are jacked up 2-3 times retail. T_T

Yeah, sometimes I wish I've known the series earlier so I could've gotten the franchise items before it inflated.

I heard some people on 4chan even vectorized preview images, then has them custom made.


Pic related. How far will you go?

Not that far for a shitty prefilled dakimakura. :P The most I've been on one cover though is about 65k, I think. Probably won't ever do that again, but I was still outbid on it (it was a Miku cover, of course.) The highest I've paid for one that I won was 42.5k.

I don't buy any bootlegs myself. Not so much because of the quality (which has improved but can still be really hit or miss from what I understand), but out of some stupid mental/moral block or something. I have no problem if other people want to buy bootlegs, but I like buying the real thing... even if it costs me an arm and a leg. T_T

Sometimes it can't be helped as far as inflation goes, as you know. Event exclusives are the worst; the Miku cover I linked a few pages back was sold at C81 and My Wife (a dakimakura cover event), probably for 15k yen, but the resale price on YJA was between 24-65k.

Daang. 24-65k? Sometimes I'm glad I like characters who are not all too popular, but is enough to become dakimakura's. I don't get how they resell it for that high, especially when it was such a recent event. Some people are really dedicated to their waifu I guess. I'm gonna go to C82 this summer, but man the lines.(It's also weird how it's not awkward buying very lewd items since everyone came for the same kind of stuff) I remember feeling the heat humidity last year and losing interest immediately, but then I have a reason now.

Yeah, I understand why you don't like bootleg. I never tried, I probably never will (Probably due to my perfectionist ideology not liking the idea of "bootleg").

Yeah, it's crazy. I took this screencap a few days after C81, after most of the Miku covers had sold .

It's probably a combination of devotion to a character and circle (thus one Miku cover might sell for 20k while the other will sell for 120k), the limited nature of dakimakura covers (from numbers I've seen, circles bring about 10-50 to events), and just general craziness.

I'd love to go to Comiket some day, but if I did I'd definitely want to go to the winter event, I think. I can stand the cold but heat and humidity do not go well together at all. I went to Blizzon in October a few years back, and despite it being only 80ish degrees outside, it was absolutely killer. But I live in Vegas, so we have very little humidity. I just hate the heat.

Be careful on YJA then; there's actually a surprising amount of bootlegs even there. If you ever see the material listed as Peach Skin, or the seller's location listed as Overseas (obviously), then it's almost guaranteed to be a bootleg. But even if the cover passes both those checks, there are still some iffy cases and it can be a bit overwhelming when you first get into the hobby. I have at least one bootleg that I know of, but possibly more, from when I first started collecting.

That's a nice Rin, though I think she'd fit better with Sakura than Saber. :P

That Rias you posted, is that a future Evening Call dakimakura? That looks amazing and has me really interested being as how I'm really liking High School DxD right now.

On the subject of bootlegs, I ordered 3 from Hobby Heart, but I'm turned off them now. I initially wanted them to not only increase my collection, but they were hard to get covers (at least for me) that were quite expensive when found so I wanted them, but not at the cost of a mortgage. :P

The quality was decent, but nothing spectacular and I now rather focus on new dakimakura than waste money on bootlegs. I also get scared from second hand sites as I'm always afraid they'll be bootleg even at the expensive prices. Right now, I'm stuck in a get the new phase. :)

If you're talking about the red-headed chick (I'm not familiar with the series) I linked, yeah; the coloring was just posted this morning. It will probably go up for preorder, with the Liliana and their other batch of new covers, in the next few weeks; possibly after the current batch of preorders closes (2/29.)

It is pretty easy to spot bootlegs if you know what to look for, but some can be hard to tell. I don't buy bootlegs at least partially because I really dislike what I'm assuming is the peachskin material; I know some offer 2WT now for an additional charge, but it apparently isn't as durable as the real deal, and I don't see any reason to start collecting bootlegs now.

Every now and then I'll see an older cover I want, but I'd say I have about 90% of the old covers I'd want, so it's mostly new covers for me as well. I try to preorder everything versus buying from YJA, due to the insane markup and I know that I'm actually support the circle this way.

Thanks, I'll have to watch closely in the upcoming weeks. Would love to nab her as she looks great. :D

No worries, I'm always happy to help. :D

Now as promised, more Rin:




Bonus Sena poster:

Preordering is definitely best.. if only there weren't all those beautiful event exclusives forcing us to YJA ;(

Think the highest I've gone is "only" 16.5k for a cover, though I'm lucky in that my tastes don't really sway to the works of the super expensive circles.