Can anyone recommend a Japanese Stamp Dealer NOT on EBay?

philatelia , are the stamps you are missing all noted in your wish list on Colnect?

Without knowing what you're looking for, you might look at Stamps-Japan.com. They seem to have a pretty good sized selection.

eBay is not really popular among the Japanese people. Judging from my experience in collecting Japanese animation artbooks, the price on eBay tends to be at least double / triple of that of other merchants.

For auction, they use Yahoo! Japan Auction which, sadly, does not offer an easy payment method for foreigners; bank transfer remains popular. Not only so, account registration used to (it might have changed) require a valid local phone number. You will have to seek for help from a proxy service provider, who can place an online order for you or even go to a physical location to purchase your desired goods.

So far I have only used Buyee, so my experience is limited to this proxy service provider. The problem with such service provider is that fees add up very quickly. Every transaction requires a 300 yen service fee (charged by Buyee), and paying by credit card will incur an extra fee of 200 yen (charged by the credit card company). Buyee provides inspection service at a certain cost, this you can ignore because Japanese people are generally trustworthy and I personally have never received any wrong item or any poorly packed item. So far, beside the item price, you have extra 500 yen to pay.

Then comes shipping, which is a big issue in my opinion. There is domestic shipping within Japan (from the seller to Buyee's warehouse) and the international shipping that you need to pay. The problem with Buyee is that, even if you purchase from the same seller at about the same time, you cannot ask for combined shipment to save the cost; Buyee requires that an order is associated with a shipment. So this is where the fees add up quickly. This also means that I have hitherto paid little attention to the seller, because whether or not I buy from the same seller again and again, I still have to pay for individual shipment. If it's the seller's honesty that you worry about -- you don't have much to worry. Forgeries are extremely rare in Japan. I have never had a single issue with buying a rare artbook that are worth of much more than a used stamp.

As for international shipping, Buyee offers relatively fewer cheap options for foreigners, compared with other forwarding companies (who don't bid on auction for their customers). Typically they use EMS or another express carrier, which may not matter too much to stamp collectors, but is certainly an issue for those who collect heavyweight objects (such as artbooks).

User experience wise, although Buyee provides service and interface in English, I tend to find way more items by searching in Japanese. So if you have no knowledge at all of the language, it will still be difficult for you to find the stamps you desire.

If anyone has the experience of using a better proxy, I would be happy to learn about your experience.

Beside Yahoo! Japan Auction, I sometimes find something on Mercari (which also requires proxy) and Rakuten, but I would say Yahoo! Japan Auction remains the main source for Japanese stamp collecting.

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That being said, I can help you collecting those Japanese stamps on your wishlist if you want. I can read and write Japanese, plus I often purchase from Japanese shops (not for stamps, but still), if you want to save on international shipping.

I happen to have a couple of duplicates of those on your wishlist which I can give you:





The '30' Horyuji pagoda (on the left of the first image) has several variations, I am not sure which one you want. The colour variation may be due to age and conservation method, but the border is quite distinguishably different.



The duplicates I have happen to not be the blue one you want. But if you want the two stamps on the top row, I will be happy to send them to you.

philatelia Hmm, I can't think about anything philatelic that I particularly want or need at the present moment... Maybe Dorothy Knapp's only biography if you chance to have it?

It's too bad that my fundraiser has already ended. Otherwise you could have made a contribution to it.

Here are the Japanese duplicates that I possess. Let me know which ones you want.

Thanks for the information! 

May I know why you are particularly looking for a used copy after having the unused one?