Dakimakuras anyone?

At long you are using 2WT or 2WR cover, a slightly bigger pillow would be much better. They were meant to be stretchy so in no way would the image be cover be stretched and distorted. I mean, I've been using like almost 5 different pillows(Cafe Rio, A and J's as such) from different companies so far and experimented with tons of covers. So if anything, it's something I'm confident about.

Oh, I see. Sorry for misunderstanding.
Are deputy services expensive? I've never had anything imported before, so I don't know.

No worries. Generally speaking, if you click on a sample image on the blog (the site I linked) it will take you to the website of the circle selling the cover. All of the information they have on the blog itself, however, lists the date range it's being sold, the artist who drew it, the circle, the production company, price, and so on. That's why it's such a useful resource.

Proxies can be expensive, and there's no denying that they're an extra expense either way. In general, you can expect it to add about $20-50 cost to the purchase price of an item, possibly more depending on the proxy you use and the cost of the item. I'd recommend either Shopping Mall Japan (for Yahoo Japanese Auctions or YJA) or Yokatta Web (for webstore orders.)

There are a couple of circles that are willing to deal with international customers, however. It also helps that they have some of the best covers available. Here's a rough list of circles that are willing to sell/ship internationally (generally through Paypal.)

(NSFW): http://www.bwstore.com.tw/
(NSFW): http://www.eveningcall.net/
(NSFW): http://dakemakura.com/
(NSFW): http://boncool.jp/ (English available)
(NSFW): http://store.comex.tw/index.php (English available)

For proxies I've been using Yokotta and they've been good thus far for me. They are pretty quick to email me back when placing orders or if I have any questions. When ordering items, especially expensive items, communication is a big point for me. Yokotta also has really good prices, at least for me being a Canadian.

I try to visit the blog once a day so I don't miss anything. Easier and less expensive to focus on the new instead of the old.

Nice comparisons Shashin on the IS dakimakura. The quality seems like such a huge difference. I didn't know roika was such a good material. The colour is more vibrant and the image is less noisy and more smooth. I can't believe the difference.

I just looked over SMJ and Yokatta. Both seem much simpler than I first imagined. I assume you use these as well?

And another question, I'm just buying the cover when I get these, right? I'd need to find a pillow to fit inside, as well?
EDIT:
Found the answers to these questions myself.
But, damn, this is an expensive thing to collect. $100+, was gonna get some at Hobby Heart or eBay for cheaper, but reading through, I was warned they may be bootlegged, or something.

Hobby Heart is definitely bootleg and for the most part eBay will be bootleg as well. If it's less than $100, it's going to be a bootleg. The quality of material won't be as nice as the original and the printing will be a bit blurry as well. You may find some with better images and not as blurry, but the material is still a lot heavier than the original.

Once I started getting in original products and not bootleg (I had ordered 3 from Hobby Heart) you can immediately tell it was a mistake you get bootleg because the original feels and looks so much better. Bootlegs end up being a waste of money.

Also, if you feel uncomfortable and google translate isn't cutting it, post it here and I will translate it for you.

I say do not order from Hobby Heart, unless something is literally unobtainable, or the price range for it is within half a thousand.

Yep, it's a very expensive hobby. Even if you manage to preorder stuff, the cheapest cover is usually about $120 without any proxy fees. If you find a cover you really want and don't manage to get it at the retail price... well, it can be excruciatingly painful to acquire.

I don't have much experience with bootlegs myself, but I made a conscious decision not to buy them very early on in my collecting days. Regardless of quality, I just have a misplaced "loyalty" I guess. I would have saved thousands of dollars had I gone the bootleg route, but I just can't convince myself to do it.

So I don't have much experience with bootlegs myself, but I can pretty much tell you this: if you see the material listed as peach skin, it's a bootleg (with one exception - the circle Big Love offers peach skin covers.) Some bootleggers will also offer 2WT, at an additional cost, but I know willowywicca and possibly a few others in this thread have tried Hobby Heart's 2WT. I'm pretty sure willowywicca said it was decent for a bootleg but definitely had some problems in terms of quality compared to a legit cover and overall durability.

And yeah, alamarco, I was absolutely blown away by the difference myself. I've never been able to directly compare two covers, especially since there are so many different manufacturers; it really wouldn't be fair to compare P80 2WR to A&J 2WT or something along those lines. Roika has always been consistently good, regardless of manufacturer, but I didn't expect it to be better than any 2WT. So I guess at the very least, if you plan on buying any covers from a circle that uses P80, roika is probably the way to go.

@alamarco: Good to know, though it makes me curious as to whether it's that much lower quality then an authentic one.

@gbatemper: I'd appreciate that, thank you.

@Shashin: I think I read about how peach skin creases easily among other things. It's also cheaper, which explains why bootlegged ones are cheaper. I see...

Wow, lots to consider when buying a dakimakura... Didn't expect to learn this much. I've found one that strikes my fancy, but no way I can get it until some more money comes my way...

The quality of a bootleg can vary tremendously. Of course, the main factor is usually print quality. Bootlegs can often be blurry and distorted and just of general low quality. However, that depends largely upon the bootlegger. Some have fairly decent print quality from what I hear. Then there is the material to consider. Some people like peach skin, it's fairly smooth and shiny but doesn't have any stretch to it. I don't care for it much myself, but even I'll admit that I like it more than SK Suede (which is the material that circles generally use for the cheapest rung of covers.)

The final and most critical thing to consider, in my opinion, is how varied it is from the source image. There could be very little variation or a tremendous amount. I think it generally has something to do with the source image published, but there could be other factors too. Generally speaking, the bootlegs I've seen with very little change have a high quality source image available (with no censor bars) on Danbooru or a similar site. Another good example I've seen someone mention is a BRS cover; the bootleg was missing a scar that the original had, but there was very little difference otherwise. Then there are the absolute travesties; the one bootleg I have is a Miku cover that Sayori did. It's fully nude on both sides, while the original has her clothed on one side and nude on the other. The absolutely butchered the boobs on both sides; I came across some shots of the original at one point, and the detailing is absolutely superior in every shape and form.

This could give you an idea of a bootleg versus legit product:
http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f114399507

Probably still don't have a good eye for it, though I see one does have noticeably lower resolution.

It's all about the details, I guess. The most obvious thing to me, and what would keep me from buying it is the faded out color it has.

Other differences I note are:
The eyebrows are black lines on the bootleg, fleshed out on the legit.
The shape of the mouth is noticeably different.
The eyes on the bootleg are far less detailed and vibrant.
The hair directly under the mouth is one clump on the bootleg, more separated strands on the legit.
The shading on the body is far more detailed on the legit, especially around the shoulder/body.
The shape of the body is more detailed on the legit, whereas the bootleg is a straight line more or less (referring to the shoulder to chest area.)
The sparkles are in different places (not really an issue, but worth noting.)

There are probably others, but that's just what I notice comparing the product shot (in the bag) of the bootleg with the shot I took of the legit for about two minutes.

Lol, I noticed these things after you told me. Now that I've taken a closer look...
This convinces me even more, though, to buy an authentic one. I sleep with my one dakimakura all the time, one starts to pick up smaller details spending more time close to it.

Yeah, though in all fairness that's probably an unfair match up. Marks is probably one of the better circles when it comes to the minor details, and that bootleg probably isn't one of the better producers. Marks also keeps their sample images of fairly low quality with lots of censor bars obstructing the goods. So the details may not be that drastic, but it's certainly a possibility you face when going with a bootleg.

bootlegs are no good, stay away. good shit sash pointing out that many differnces. trust me, when you feel the fabric of the real shit compared to the fake ones, it's incredible how much better quality is. when my boy k0bun taught me the ways of dakimakura collecting, i never went back to bootlegs ever again.

I see. Well, thank you very much for all the information you've given me. When I find something I like and have some money saved up, I hope you'll assist me if I have more questions.

EDIT:
Oh, and you said to let you know about specific covers I'm interested in. Should I link you to it, or will a picture suffice?

Feel free to ask away. And the more information you can provide, the better. Sometimes a picture is enough, but more information never hurts.

As Shashin said, I've bought a few bootlegs of both peach skin and 2way tricot materials to get an impression of how they hold up compared to official ones. I didn't buy any cover that I already had so couldn't do a direct comparison but still from what I got there was plenty of noticeable points of comparison.

First up, is that peach skin is a *horrible* material, and that alone should put you off ever getting a peach skin bootleg. I got the 2way tricot ones from some japanese auctions (not hobbyheart, though someone else did get one from them and the material started to fall apart after 1 month he said). For mine, the material was actually quite decent and felt like proper 2way tricot except for 1 of the cases which was really really thin for a 2way tricot.

The print quality in both peach skin and 2way tricot has many issues though. All of the 2way tricot ones the image was vastly darker than it was meant to be. This does happen sometimes with official products too when comparing to their promo shots, but not to the same degree as this. They did however have all the details the original dakimakura cover had (I was able to check from scans made of the official released ones on yande.re ). I imagine they took those scans (or similar) to make the bootleg and somehow that copying of a copy results in the heavy darkness.

Then as shashin mentioned, there's also ones which either lack all of the detail of the original, or are simply vector copies which lack proper shading altogether. These look terrible no matter the material type used.

I have about 8 bootlegs, and I am only (somewhat) happy with 1 side of 1 of them (the other side of it is far too dark). The rest are all just bad. So I think it's a broad enough sample range to be convinced that bootlegs are never the way to go unless the cover you want has been sold out for years and is unobtainable in auctions.

Regarding any covers you might want you can just link us it on the http://blog.埋もれる抱き枕er.jp/ blog, or give a picture if you don't have it on the blog. Also one important and totally unobvious thing about the blog, which still amazes me to this day. You can search in English on the blog. You don't need to type in the japanese names of things to get search results.

E.g. here is me searching for one of my favourite artists Koume Keito using her japanese name:
http://blog.埋もれる抱き枕er.jp/?s=小梅けいと

And here is me searching typing her name in english http://blog.埋もれる抱き枕er.jp/?s=koume+keito

As you can see, the japanese search gives a few more results. Specifically, it includes amalgamation posts for events and the like, which include 小梅けいと somewhere inside them. The english search returns the posts for every single cover that koume keito made though. I guess the site owner adds some extra info to the news posts on specific covers to allow this to work, but doesn't go through it for the event posts since there's too many names in them or something. It also seems not to work when searching for names in Kanji rather than Hiragana, so may be of limited usefulness.

Anyway, tl;dr version: quick english search works to return many covers you may want to find on the site, though japanese searching is still best.

Hmm, you really do learn something new every day. I've tried that with a few circles in the past and never had it work on the blog, so it must be an artist thing only. I never bothered tried the English spelling for artists because it was just one extra step to google the name and copy/paste it into the blog's search bar. Even so, that's a fairly cool feature that I had absolutely no idea about.

It also works searching for character or series names. I haven't tried it extensively for circle names but it has worked for the few I've tried. Perhaps the ones you tried had a slightly different spelling to their romanized form (for searching purposes) than what the official accepted one is for us English speakers. Or maybe it's new functionality that didn't exist previously when you tried.

I'd probably still end up searching in japanese quite often as it's easy to google the japanese, just to be sure I'm not missing anything, but if you're new at this searching in english is quite handy.

Edit: Actually, I think it doesn't work too well with names in Kanji, but works when they're in Katakana/Hiragana. Also.. searching for "Homura" also works to return posts where she was put down as her nickname "ほむほむ" (Homuhomu), so I guess some of the names in posts have aliases which also match to searches.. or something.