Slave IV

Or order from AJ and only pay 1600Y to ship a single item DHL. Best expedited shipping price ever.

Looks like AJ is the only reasonable place to shop at now. Well, of course other than NY with their awesome, cheap and unstoppable yet slow ferry option.

Haha, so that’s why you got so many of those?

That’s why LEK is the best there is at what he does.

Your pictures and posing keep getting better. More!

That looks badass!

If all your ferry shipments are consistently in worse shape, I’d probably go with another method too. I’m not crazy about having to have flawless packaging but I definitely prefer it to getting banged up packages. Most importantly is the toy inside but I’m a collector that keeps everything including packaging so I want it all in as good condition as possible.

Sorry to hear I contributed to some trouble for you. We are just all sharing our experience so YMMV. If you get packages in bad condition regardless of method, I suspect it has to do with your local post office. I think it all depends on location and what your package has to go through to get to you. I live on the west coast so my guess is my packages have minimal amount of handling and to get to me.

Yeah, I'm not worried about it at all. I've always used ferry whenever it's into the two digit mark of savings and it almost always is for larger items like Valks. Doesn't take very long for that to add up to a lot of money when you buy as many toys from Japan as I do. It seems like my post office and whatever process it takes before it gets to them has been working out for me because my packages are either always pristine inside or at the worst, I've seen slight wrinkles in corners that could have happened anywhere, with any shipping including before it was even shipped.

Haha yeah, I just went with the ferry option with FJ. I'm in no hurry and see no reason to pay more for something especially if it isn't going to definitely be faster.

I usually do and my other upcoming orders with them are all ferry but I think this is one of the cases where ferry doesn't make sense because it's a single, smaller item. They gave me the price options for EMS or regular Air and said I can just sit back and wait or let them know if I decide to change shipping method. It was only an additional 1190 or 1410 yen depending on which method I wanted

An update from NY...I noticed one of my items is about to release and I had SAL for the shipping so I sent them a note about what I should do. They responded in less than one day and the basics are that they can hold the item until they are able to ship with SAL or I can choose another currently available method and pay the difference. Will see how it goes and I might choose something else this time just because I have no idea when SAL will be available again.

Thanks for posting @sh9000 Minmei instabought.

LEK wins again! Beautiful! Yeah, the display stand looks incredible now and something I want instead of something I don't even want to use. The ordinance looks great too. LEK is the man!

I just made an order at Mandarake and they had AIR SP available so I went for that. Will see how it goes.

Ah, good catch on the ps. I respect people with the passion to customize but no way I would pay full price for a Valk and then spend the time and effort to paint it, only to end up with something not as good as just waiting to buy it that way from the factory. Now, if you were known as LEK customs, that would be a different story.

Oh man, I want. But I’ll wait for official. That paint job looks better than some others I’ve seen though.

That is about as fine a haul as you can get.

Thanks!

And I finally opened this beauty.

Speaking of Made in USA, I just got this piece of quality goodness.

I’m all for capitalism, but we’ve never had it. True capitalism has to have a moral base to go by or else it’s what we have, which is an unsustainable, self defeating drive for profit over all else, including life. There is a more sustainable profit model that makes striving for quality the factor that gives you competitive edge to make more profit in the long run. All countries do what they think they need to gain an edge. People are used as disposable resources when needed. All countries end up doing the same. As a so called country that favors human rights, yet devolving a system that encourages other countries to fight over who can treat their workers the worst is about as bad as it gets. Yes, China loves the business and slave labor is better than no job at all or is it? The bottom line is the way they did it there, they are now in a better position worldwide. They can construct everything from the worst useless garbage (that mostly is demanded by outside markets like the USA) to the highest quality tech and they can do it quick. Yes, this virus started there and a big part of it is their huge population (which they also get flak for trying to control) and inability to control what every back alley is doing. Black markets and criminals exist everywhere. Thing is, they did a better job of containing it and laid the blueprint of how to do it out for everyone else. We didn’t listen. The important part here for me is, Japan always made the best Mecha toys when I was growing up. I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen again.

Yeah, I don’t want to get into this too much but all these countries around the world have been taking advantage of basically slave labor in China, then we complain about human rights at the same time. Now we’re blaming them because we ignored everything they laid out to protect ourselves from this? Lot of hypocrisy. Whatever the case, countries should stop running to the next place to rape and pillage for resources and start doing more for themselves again. I’m all for more Made In USA, Made in Japan, Made in China Made in Germany or whatever for whoever makes the best of whatever they are making, not who can make it the cheapest.

This: Haha, thank you All joking aside, I use them simply because they usually have the lowest prices. I don't give a crap about wait times or customer service as long as I get the same product in the end. That being said, I've had nothing but great customer service from them (like getting the SV-51 legs immediately) and experienced no significant delays on any of my hundreds of orders with them. Then we can talk about websites, where they are one of the only shops to make improvements to reduce (pretty much eliminate) crashes and cart jacking during preorder madness. All the other major Japanese retail sites have gone backwards in terms of their websites to the point where a shop like HLJ is nearly useless during preorder madness and even not during preorder madness, it is plagued with glitches and inconsistency. Years ago, HLJ was my main shop but now they are near the bottom of the list. NY is #1 with AJ coming in second. All the other shops at this point, I only use if I have to for some reason. Mandarake always #1 for released/used items.

I have a separate PayPal account setup specifically for buying from Japan and a credit card with no foreign transaction fees connected to it. Nothing has changed for me in years but I always check and it is still charging in Yen as I have it set to.