Finding New Toys

I want to start by solving one of the biggest problems I encountered in my early collecting days: finding new toys.

The thing about toys based on anime and manga is they're generally only produced for a limited amount of time while the game or series is at max popularity, then they're never made again.  Even if a series or game is still popular, the toys may be out of production, or at least a specific series of toys will be.  This is a bad thing, because it makes certain toys very hard to find even a few short months after they were released, but it's also a good thing for people who bought those toys for cheap when they came out, because their value increases quickly.

This means you need to know about new toys before they come out, so you can prepare to grab them before the price gets jacked up by overseas eBay sellers who might be shipping bootlegs (I'll cover those later).  I've found the best place to find new releases is play-asia.com.  Just click on the "toys" tab and look down the list to see new releases, upcoming releases, best sellers, bargains, and more.  Now I wouldn't necessarily advise actually buying from play-asia as they do tend to overcharge, but I'll cover places to actually buy from in the next post.

The Chase:  Use play-asia.com.