New to DD, and hoping for help to not make more mistakes

Howdy, I'm new to the whole doll world. A world I thought I'd never enter, but here I am. The short of it is I ordered a DD Miku on eBay, only to find out two days later they were going for sale on Volks USA the next day. That was not a cheap mistake.

-Lesson 1, check the Volk's USA site often.

Well, I saw that they had some hand options for cheaper than I was seeing on eBay and went to the site the next day to buy some, and all was sold out.

-Lesson 2, be online at midnight when they open stuff for sale.

I was lucky, in that afternoon some stuff was on sale again so I got a couple things. Now I found an outfit on eBay I liked, but wasn't on the Volk's site. I bought it, but the next day found a site called Dollfie World that had it for half what I paid.

-Lesson 3, Google outfits before buying.

So I found the Miku ribbon outfit on eBay and following lesson 3 lead me to this site, and caused me to have more questions now that I found a place to ask them. Bear with me, as there is a method to my madness in the order and scope of my questions. I have read some of the stickies here, so some questions will be to make sure I understood what I read.

 

On the USA site I found these items going on sale the 20th of this month.

volksusastore . com/webstores/event/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=1046

My understanding is they went for sale in Japan in March, so, does the USA get items that didn't sell in Japan or do they make additional to sell in the USA?

And I see that they are lottery, does that mean placing an order as soon as it's open doesn't matter as they're still just pulling names from a hat?

Now to the Miku ribbon outfit, it goes for sale on the 28th at 12:00, is that noon in Japan?

www . volks . co . jp/page_ex.jsp?CONTROLID=SC0020&BUSINESSID=InitDisp&category=DP35&version=en

I see some items also listed for 11:00 on the 28th. If I wanted to get one from that list, is it add to cart and checkout, then an hour later start a new cart for the Miku outfit?

And it's not a lottery, so it's first click first serve, correct?

Being the items for sale on the USA site were released a couple months ago, will the Miku outfit come to the USA site in a couple more months, or does anyone really know?

If I decide to order from the international (Japanese) site, how can I tell if an item is a pre order or a lottery?

Everything says "Quantity limit" but some items have "Limited" next to the price on the detail page. Does "Quantity limit" mean your are limited in how many you can order, and "Limited" mean when they are gone that's it?

 

I'm sure I'll have more questions, but this should be enough to get me started. Here is my new girl smirking at my mistakes.

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P.S. Guess I can't post URLs or images yet, so to use them remove spaces in the domain address after cut/pasting.

ok, here's the thing - Japan-side always set aside a few units to sell on the USA-side. Volks USA used to do those sales "clicky wars" style as well, until the volume of people trying to load up their site kept crashing it within seconds

Now Volks USA does all of their new sales as lottery, in hopes the week-long entry period will keep their servers from tanking. It doesn't matter when you join in, in first minutes or day later... your odds of winning/buying the thing are not affected

 

Miku's prev sets have been on USA site, chances are pretty good the new ribbon-girl set will make it over eventually as well

 

On the International site, Pre-Orders are super-rare! Those are "everyone who orders the thing will get it" and so far it's only been Saber Alter ver2/Saber Nero, Macross girls, both Miku releases ....

they also take over a year to get from placing order to receiving!

All of their other releases are clicky-wars (be logged into the site at least 30min before sale stars, the connection will get beyond slow as everyone and their dog is trying for those dozens of items), but new dolls are lottery. Those are also very clearly marked, their entry period lasts days

What happens with VolksUSA is that Volks International sets aside some stock for them, and then ships it--by boat. Which takes 2-3 months. So that's why the releases at VolksUSA are always 2-3 months later than the Dolpa is. They get all the "standard" outfit releases, but USA's availability for limited dolls is kind of sporadic--Miku is an exception to a lot of rules.

 

Lottery does indeed mean that you toss your name into the metaphorical hat within the time window, and you get the chance to buy the item if you 'win'. So as long as you've put in your entry within the time window, you've done what you can.

 

The non-lotteries are click wars, and there's definitely a reason we use the word 'war': it's pretty chaotic. The server can get pretty sluggish, and on some occasions has even gone down. If you're after a click war item, it's recommended to be logged in to your Volks account before putting anything into your cart (if you're logged in on the International site, they stay in your cart several hours, instead of just one if you're not logged in), and it's helpful to have all shipping and billing information typed out ahead of time so you can just copy-paste it in.

 

What's so frustrating about the "Limited" versus "Quantity Limit" thing is that technically, MOST Volks releases are limited editions, and if they do re-release things they're often in different colors or readapted to different sizes. Usually though "Limited" items are directly linked to events and/or specific doll releases, and may be licensed of copyrighted characters/designs. Sometimes they're even lotteries in and of themselves. . . can't tell if "Ribbon Girl" is going to be lottery or click war though. :/ (Maybe someone else can enlighten us?)

On the International site, Pre-Orders are super-rare! Those are "everyone who orders the thing will get it" and so far it's only been Saber Alter ver2/Saber Nero, Macross girls, both Miku releases ....

 

And Kos-Mos plus M.O.M.O from Xenosaga too.

 

Now Volks USA does all of their new sales as lottery, in hopes the week-long entry period will keep their servers from tanking.

That actually makes me happy to hear since click wars pretty much suck.

 

 

-Lesson 1, check the Volk's USA site often.

 

I would actually suggest checking Volks Japan, Volks USA, and the "News and Events section of this forum often. As Chise and Poof pointed out a lot of the items will reach the USA months after the Japan releases. Paying attention to the Volks Japan site will let you know what clothing items you need to save for months before they are released here. Sometimes members who attend events in Japan will post photo's of dolls before they get an official announcement too.

 

One thing I would add is the limited releases can be really hard to get from lottery, so for a lot of us if we really want the character we end up paying aftermarket markups. I highly recommend learning to use Yahoo Japan Auctions and Mandarake. YJA will be cheaper than Mandarake, but both of them are usually cheaper than Ebay. Dollfie World can be more or less expensive it really depends on the item.

 

Natalie gets some really interesting stuff in, so I do check DW often and I don't mind giving her my money. She's pretty nice in my experience.

 

P.S. Chise I keep meaning to say this. I love your forum avatar. Tomoe is awesome.

Thanks all for the info. Time to decide how I want to try getting my hands on the Miku ribbon outfit.

I try not to bother with ebay at all for Dollfie Dream items, the prices are just crazy. Some other places you can look are:

 

Volks International and Volks USA, of course -- check both and see when things are being released and how they will be available (like lottery, click-war, regular stock)

 

DollfieWorld, which you mentioned, they have some price market-ups, but not as bad as ebay

 

Yahoo Japan Auctions - you can find some good deals sometimes, but you need a proxy service to buy anything (there's info on that elsewhere in the forum)

http://list4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/%E3%83%89%E3%83%AB%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0-%E4%BA%BA%E5%BD%A2-%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A3%E3%83%A9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB-%E3%81%8A%E3%82%82%E3%81%A1%E3%82%83-%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0/2084241345-category.html

 

Jungle http://jungle-scs.co.jp/sale_en/ They have fullset DDs and outfits

 

Mandarake http://www.mandarake.co.jp/ Their prices can be a bit high, but you don't need a proxy so it balances out

 

The marketplace here and on the Den of Angels forums

 

Maybe there are some other places someone else knows ^_^

Thanks, I'll check these places out. Guess I need to learn how to do the JYA stuff anyway.