umnut Posts

Looks like TAMA has broken away from Evening Call and has formed her own circle. I've always been a fan of her work, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I hope she succeeds, but I also really hope she's as foreign friendly as Evening Call is, because it would be a shame to have to use a proxy again. :<

The circle is called New Island, and you can see her first cover in production here:
http://newisland.x.fc2.com/sakuhinn.html#hatate

Because in my experience with SMJ, there's only one other person crazy enough to bid 35k+ on a cover, and that would be me. :P Given that I saw two close with the SMJ account at around the same time, it was a giveaway given your tendency to buy two at a time.

The Miku was actually closing about where I expected. You have to remember that we didn't get in on the first batch of Miku; she was originally sold at Comiket and we purchased ours from the My Wife/other event batch. The first Comiket batch had a few that sold at really good prices (the best was 24k buyout, but my limit was still tied up >.<) but the trend quickly spiraled upward. When there were still a good number left, they were selling in the 38-40k range. With the last 5 or so, things got even crazier and they were selling in the 45-50k range.

You say "again" when you mention the Miku Vitas, so that would be a total of 4? Combined with the three Miku covers, I'd be paying that off for 2-3 months. T_T



It's hard to tell. There are definitely some telecards that fetch a high price. It isn't my area of knowledge, so I couldn't really say what most/rarer ones go for. I will say that YJA is absolutely full of price gougers, in pretty much any product. So it's really a matter of what the buyer is willing to pay for it. There aren't any front end listing fees for YJA, so a seller can list at whatever price they want for as long as they want, without any penalty. So with the system set up the way it is, if they're not in a hurry to sell, there isn't any downside to them for listing at an absolutely ridiculous price level.

I'd recommend checking out Mandarake; they get in a lot of telecards, at a fairly reasonable price, and you can order from them without the use of a proxy. If you want to search a particular series, usually what I just is just google it and copy/paste the Japanese title from somewhere. You can search all the results that way, or just paste in テレカ if you want to be specific.

The link you linked doesn't list anything for me. Some webpage don't like direct link for search terms, but I can still tell you want a telecard is like. Personally, they're a cool bonus for me but I never go out of my way to buy them. They're about the size of a credit card, so very small.

Yeah, that's how things go with proxies. most proxies are willing to hold items for a few months, so we usually tend to stockpile a few items and then request a shipment when we have a lot of goodies in them. ^^ I'll be requesting a shipment myself withing the next week or so and should be getting about 12-15 items total.

Honestly, with as many cover as most of us have, we couldn't use them all if we tried. So display is a more than viable option. These days, I mostly take pictures of new items and then pack them up for storage. I wish I had more room to display them and a pillow that wasn't beat to hell; they do make great tapestries/etc and it really is a joy to sleep with them on a good pillow. So even if it is damaged, I would probably recommend buying it for display purposes only.

Since you mentioned a webshop (comshop), I'd also like to recommend YokattaWeb as a proxy. Their service is pretty hit or miss when it comes to communication, but they have the absolute cheapest rate when it comes to weborders (comshop, toranoana, d-stage, mandarake, etc - pretty much any shop that isn't an auction.)

And no worries, man. We're all here to help; the thread has been pretty dead of the last day or two before you posted, anyway. :P

Unfortunately, it isn't as detailed as it should be. Generally listings will show a generic sample image (that they ripped from some website) and a picture of the actual product as it is packaged, which is the case here.

So here's the shot of the actual cover:

http://auctions.c.yimg.jp/img377.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/users/1/3/8/9/nemuisidarui-img600x450-1303315550sihdcj44804.jpg

It's the auction description that told me the state of the item; I just ran it through Google Translate, so you're free to do so as well and make of it what you will:

"状態：某中古店で購入したものです。私自身は使用しておりません。余白部分に少し汚れ、使用感があります。
洗濯すると色落ちする素材かと思いますのでそのままにしております。サイズは150x45cm、材質は多分、サテンです。(勿論、正規品です。)
中古品ですので生理的に気にならない方、タペストリー等で使用されたい方のみご入札下さい。
中古品という性質上、ご希望でしたら返品(返金)に応じます。【但し往復分の送料・振込手数料は落札者様負担でお願い致します。】"

For 3.6k, it's probably fine. It's all a mental block, anyway. There is no way of telling what the seller actually did with the covers. The two I listed were used, but they were on sale at 6k a piece. I just try not to think of the worst case scenario, of what the previous user could have done with them, when I figure the average price for both of these covers is 20k and 12k respectively. I opened them both up, and didn't notice any damage, so I'm not even going to think of what they could have been through. For your case, the retail was probably 8-11k, so you're getting a pretty good deal.

If you do want to use them, you'll have to use a proxy service. They're pretty easy to figure out, but they do add additional cost to the item. If you're in the US, I'd probably recommend SMJ; they have a ton of cool features, and their YJA rates are comparable to most proxy services.

You can find themhere.

Here's the relevant auction link; you'll need it once you've signed up. You should be able to view it through the SMJ site, but you need a YJA account to view it yourself: http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f97731254


Going back to your note about finding one in better condition. It definitely is possible, but I'd probably expect it to sell in the 9k+ range if it were new/unused. If you want to wait and have me look around, that's absolute your call and I'd be happy to do so. But I wouldn't expect something to pop up in the price range you're looking at anytime soon.

Did a very quick search (I'll search more later) and only found one currently listed. It's also in the adult section of YJA, so linking it wouldn't do much good. It's being sold by the same seller that's selling the one cover for 9800 yen. It's listed for 3500 yen, but unfortunately it's used - the seller states that it has some dirt in the margins and is kinda worn. If you wanted it just to display, it might be worth it for that price, but I probably wouldn't recommend sleeping with it. :P


Edit: Small Mandarake order just arived. I've wanted the Argyle (Monster Hunter) cover for awhile, and I couldn't pass up the Marks cover. Both came with the "little damage" tag, so they were both cheaper than you'd normally expect to find either of them. Haven't opened them up yet (it's sad when this is the first thing I do), but I'll update if there is any major damage. My experience in the past with Mandarake's minor damage tag has been good; I've ordered three covers with it - didn't notice any damage on one, another had some lose threads near the zipper, and the last had some dirt stains or something near the bottom.

Interesting, it was a dakimakura cover.

The prices for the two I linked are pretty okay. The 9.8k one is probably pretty close to the original retail, while the 5k (it is a bid, so it could go higher) is likely a good deal cheaper than the retail price. Unfortunately, you just can't buy stuff from YJA (Yahoo Japanese Auctions) unless you're in Japan, pretty much. So you'd have to use a proxy which adds some additional cost. If you can tell me character names/the name of the series the middle (with the two chicks) is from, I might be able to look it up. As I said, based on the material and it having two characters, I think it might be a bed sheet and not a dakimakura but I could be wrong.

I wouldn't really say they're rare, but they're likely a few years old and the systems for looking up covers back then was probably not as good. The fact that it has been a few years also influences availability, obviously.

That's a complicated question, which has multiple answers: Yes, no, and kinda.

Company covers (done by official sources/licensed/the artist for the series) almost always are censored. Either in a way that the goods aren't shown (they have panties on), creatively so (juices, tentacles, hair, etc is in the way of the nether regions), or flat out mosaic/Barbie doll nether regions. The last is pretty rare, but unfortunately eroge companies seem to be the ones most likely to do so.

Circles on the other hand, which are basically small groups of fans, usually don't censor at all. And in fact, they can be very explicit. Circles choose what they draw... it's kinda unlikely you'd find these characters done by a circle, as they tend to focus on anime series/Touhou/etc.

Hmm, given the material of those, they look like they might be bedsheets (at least the one with two characters.) But I'm not really familiar with either series enough to say for sure. I'll look around, but a quick search didn't pull up anything. Do you have a link to the page you got that image from?

Also, if you're just interested in tentacles in general (good choice!) there are a few covers that have them. Off the top of my head, the recent Escalayer cover comes to mind, as well as these two:

http://blog.xn--er-573a1isbf1441e2hs87j.jp/archives/4685

http://blog.xn--er-573a1isbf1441e2hs87j.jp/archives/8717

Edit: Sample image of the first: http://shimg.surpara.com/shop/item/41/41552.jpg

Sold out on Mandarake and doesn't appear to be on YJA (the two main sources.) Still looking for the others, but haven't had much luck yet.

Double Edit: Found these two on YJA:





Unfortunately, they're both in the adult section, so unless you have an account, linking them for you won't do much good. The first is a 9800 yen buyout, and the second is a 5000 yen bid. Both look legit, but the material probably isn't the best.

Unfortunately I haven't seen anything solid. One seller believed the size to be A0 (841 × 1189 mm), while another seller just measured the length of it rolled up (which would be the width) and said it was 90cm. So probably pretty close to A0, if not a little bigger/smaller.

Heh, funny you should mention that. :P The one I really wanted was the Peace limited version. I had to leave the house for about 20 minutes after the March had popped up. While I'm away from the house, I check my phone and sure enough they added the limited version. Tried to snag it on my phone, but was too late. :(

Finally found a sample of Anko's Miku tapestry the other day, and it looks fantastic. She seems to be going down in price a bit; I've seen a few close as low as 28k. Which is still absurdly high, but the tapestry is huge:

http://www.mandarake.co.jp/information/2012/08/30/21gcs02/index.html

SMJ finally got my Rabbit.net cover in, which should work out pretty well. I should be able to pay off my remaining invoices a bit later this week, so hopefully it will be stored in the US by then. Then it will be time to request a fairly large shipment. ^^

Edit: Was it you that picked up the new Anko Miku cover, Zengar?

Double Edit: You're all making me edit my post a ton of times. D: Mandarake added the Marks Pretty Cure March cover for 25k, for anyone interested. The last one that sold went for ~25k on YJA, so this would be a fairly good way to get it without the proxy fees.

You've missed about 5-6 already. :< The first 4 were pretty absurd, but the last two sold in the 20-23k range. Still high, but not all that terrible. I would have probably bid on the one that just closed (an hour or two ago), but my limit is still completely tried up from C82 purchases. :P

Hopefully more will go up soon.

There are some things I'd like to preorder, both currently and upcoming. Haven't gotten much in the mail recently myself, though; last thing was the Kyounetsu Reimu I ordered from Mandarake a week or two ago. Will be paying for another small Mandarake order in a few days, and will probably be requesting a SMJ shipment in a week or two.

Nice, I'll have to check it out.

And yeah, that's definitely something to keep in mind with the blog; from what I can tell it's a one man operation and I've seen some of his recent tweets that have talked about how difficult it is to keep track of everything since there isn't one specific resource to see what's available. It's without a doubt the best tool we currently have available to us, but I guess we have to keep in mind that it's just an enthusiast in a position similar to we're in. He does us all a great service by cataloging what's available, but he's probably only able to do so because he checks sites frequently and is following a bunch of companies/circles on Twitter. In the end, I'm sure the blog misses a lot of stuff that goes up, and I've even caught a few things that were never posted on the blog from time to time.


Edit: Interesting, the Big Taiwan Empire Boku wa Tomodachi cover are going back up for resale at BonCool. They were fairly expensive to begin with, as they switched to A&J before they were produced (they were originally slated for Seiren, I think), but these are even more expensive and being printed by a company I've never heard of (Nekusutanto/Nextant.) Looking them up, it's apparently the material BonCool has used for their last few covers and another few circles have used. Will be interesting to see how it compares with the others when one of us finally tries them.

Probably has something to do with how things are published, I guess. This seems to be an official product celebrating his work, while the Tomoe cover may have been a circle work he published separately. But I own two of his covers and have seen a few others, and all have been horribly censored, usually with an oval white spot just completely ripped out of the art. It's probably even worse than mosaic censoring. -_-

That's probably why it was so cheap, though honestly it's about what you should have expected. That's disappointing that his artbook only has two color pages, but a half color/black and white seems to be the norm for most, as well as the sketch thing. As for the censoring, I would have assumed that before I ordered anyway given that his work is fairly commonly censored.

This is a fairly interesting set:

http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/ja/item_s-1001460.html
http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/ja/item_s-1001459.html

The opening on the pillow seems to have a fairly obvious purpose, but I wonder if the cover is designed to work with it. Regardless, the cover doesn't look too bad by itself; bit tamer than I usually like, but the character is pretty cute.

It's some sort of plot to keep it out of the hands of foreigners! By throttling the amount they have in stock at any given time, they know proxies will fail to successfully order it, and thus we won't be able to get our hands on it. D: Or they keep printing up what they think will be enough for demand, and sell out quicker than expected. But really, I have no idea.

Yeah, as far as censoring goes, that's why I tend to stay away from company covers. With circles, you can never really tell if something is going to be censored or not. D: Like the few HOP covers that have been censored in the past have had a sample image without any obstruction, but it wasn't large enough to spot the censoring (if it was even on the sample image.) Company covers are usually pretty consistent in that they can't usually show too much; one should always go in assuming censorship and if you somehow get lucky and it isn't censored, count it as an exception. But yeah, you can generally tell by the surrounding area what type of cover it's going to be... it's the ones that have the massive Sample bars/caution tape/etc that I usually try to stay away from.

Ah, nice. I figured that would be the site to post the review; in my previous search their site was the best I could find since they bought two of the cover. Yeah, I knew there wouldn't be anything explicit but the chick is nice enough looking that I'm okay with that. Just wanted to get a rough idea of what the other side looked like before I decided if I wanted it or not.