auction
Top bid for supposedly rare card soars past US$13 million, surpasses embezzled amount that got its owner life in prison.
With just a few more days to go, fans of anime itasha and Key’s newest visual novel ought to check this out before it’s gone.
The two things in life that are always guaranteed are death and taxes. Death can come out of nowhere, and it’s the most surprising ones that hurt us the most. Taxes, on the other hand, should never be a surprise. You have to file and pay your taxes every year at the exact same time, so you can’t really say that you didn’t see them coming. In Japan, if the government finds out that you are withholding money from them, trust that they will be coming to collect that cash. As one citizen found out, if you can’t pay them what you owe, they will just take away your precious collection of anime figures.
When the mobile game Flappy Bird was taken off the market last year, sales of mobile phones with the game installed were quickly put on auction sites to the tune of US$300 to US$90,000. The sales on eBay technically violated the site’s Terms of Service, which required smartphones and tablets to be restored to their factory settings. Many were pulled by eBay before anyone was able to drop cash on the listings.
A curious item came up for bid on Japan’s Yahoo! Auction site, simply titled, “The present I was going to surprise my girlfriend with – 2 years and 1 month old.” The story behind the ungiven present was as emotional as it seemed and included a description that inspired netizens all over to persevere even in the face of heartbreak. The item, a modest leather pencil case, started with an opening bid of just 2,000 yen (US$18) but closed at an impressive final price of 35,853 yen ($335).
The story of this young man’s unrequited love and the steps he took to mend his broken heart up next after the break!
An interesting auction popped up last week and at first glance it just looked like an old junkie decorative statue. But further investigation revealed it to have a bit of gamer cred. This robot was designed and built by Namco, yeah, that Namco, the one of Pac-man, Tekken and Soulcalibur fame. Unfortunately, this robot isn’t going to do some super duper awesome game playing for you. However, it is a piece of Namco history on the auction block. If you claim to be the biggest Namco fan in the world, then maybe you NEED this robot.
I kid you not, dear reader, someone in Japan just paid tens of thousands of dollars for a single one-yen coin–a tiny disc of aluminium whose ordinary street value is just US$0.009.
Launched in 1983 in Japan, Nintendo’s Family Computer, or Famicom as it is more fondly known, quickly became a household name thanks to titles like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Strikingly different in design to its Western counterpart, the NES, the Famicom’s low profile with its multitude of buttons and ridges and docking slots for a pair of gold and burgundy controllers is now considered to be an iconic piece of video game hardware, frequently bought and sold at auction or at used game stores.
While many gamers would no doubt quite like the idea of picking a Famicom up for themselves and reliving a few 8-bit classics, we’re not entirely sure how many people would be in the market to buy 1,000 of the things all at once…
Strange and interesting items often pop up on the Japanese Yahoo Auction page. Human billboards, human skulls, inhumanly overpriced electronics, and a private pop idol performance, could all be found in the past.
This time, however, it looks like the Earth itself is going under the hammer at a starting price of 69 yen (hehe) (US$0.86).
This photo might make you think that times are tough for the “heavy metal idols” in Alice Juban, oft referred to as the “sisters of rock.” Actually, it was an unprecedented promotion for the innovative idol group.
This September, major auction site Yahoo Auction opened a new category, Knowledge and Skills. Tucked away in there was a very special item up for bid: the girls of Alice Juban.
That didn’t sound right. I didn’t mean the girls were selling themselves. They were selling the rights to an exclusive live performance for the winning bid in Shibaura, Tokyo on 10 October.
It turned out to be a really surreal event, and I don’t mean because of the usual hockey masks, chainsaws, and stage diving. It was a surprisingly touching performance that moved everyone in the room to tears.
A pretty rare item popped up on Yahoo Japan’s auction page recently seemingly just in time for the Halloween season. From 26 September to 3 October, users were able to place their bid on a real human skull – at least I think it’s real according to the eerily vague product description.
At the closing, the winning bid was for 104,000 yen (US$1,300) which may or may not be a bargain. I haven’t been following the human bone index recently.
Interested in investing in Japanese historical real estate but don’t have quite enough to afford a medieval castle town?
Right now there’s a 150-year-old traditional Japanese thatched-roof farmhouse for sale on Yahoo! Auction for the unbeatable price of 1 yen (about 1 penny)!
Though by judging from the pictures, it may be a bit of fixer-upper…
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