{"id":22496,"date":"2026-05-14T16:51:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/22496\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T16:51:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:51:06","slug":"i-went-used-camera-shopping-in-tokyo-with-a-legendary-collector-heres-what-i-learned-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/22496\/","title":{"rendered":"I Went Used-Camera Shopping in Tokyo With a Legendary Collector. Here\u2019s What I Learned."},"content":{"rendered":"

Buying sight unseen \u2014 or with only a few images to go on \u2014 can be an anxiety-inducing experience. We\u2019ve got you covered<\/a> when it comes to advice for buying online in the US, but some of the shops with the best selections are found abroad, often in Japan. <\/p>\n

And Japanese sellers have a mixed reputation, to put it kindly.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaha, yeah, \u2018Mint +++++,\u2019\u201d Hunt said with a laugh, referring to the often drastically inflated ratings bestowed upon used gear by Japanese eBay sellers. \u201cI thought that was so funny, I made it into T-shirt<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

To be sure, the duplicitous nature of Japanese camera eBay listings has been exaggerated and meme-ified<\/a>. You can find plenty of reputable sellers (including names like Five Star Camera<\/a>, Irohas Camera<\/a>, and the Japan Camera Hunter himself), as well as plenty of stories of successful overseas purchases on camera forums. But as Hunt put it, \u201cThere are a lot of sellers on that platform and others that use the \u2018Japanese seller\u2019 power to take advantage of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best way to tell if an eBay seller is reputable is to look at their history. \u201cLook for sellers that have been around for a long time,\u201d Hunt said. Beyond the shop\u2019s age, check for recent feedback; reputations can decline over time, so be sure to look for recent negative reviews.<\/p>\n

And when you\u2019re looking at specific listings from eBay sellers based in Japan, ignore the rating given in the title and examine the details. Sometimes a listing will claim that a lens is in \u201cnear mint\u201d condition but plainly state that there is fungus in the glass, or sticky aperture blades. Do your due diligence, and you\u2019ll probably be fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buying sight unseen \u2014 or with only a few images to go on \u2014 can be an anxiety-inducing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-22496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tokyo","8":"tag-japan","9":"tag-tokyo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}