How to bid on Yahoo! Auctions with DEJAPAN

“Ii no ka? Yahoo! Auctions!” Since 1998, Yahoo! has dominated online auction services in Japan. 

At the time of writing, Yahoo! Auctions has websites for Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Services for the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, and Singapore have all unfortunately shut down.

Luckily, you can still bid on items from Yahoo! Auctions from anywhere in the world with DEJAPAN!

How Bidding on Yahoo! Auctions works

So let’s say you find this SUPER cute Pikachu plushie on Yahoo! Auctions, and you just HAVE to have it!

First, hit the “Place a Bid” button. That brings up the bidding screen.

All you have to do is enter your bid in the box and hit the green button.

You REALLY want to make sure you win the item, so you enter 8,000 JPY. So your bid will be placed for 8,000 JPY right away, right?

WRONG!

Let me explain how bidding on Yahoo! Auctions works.

Each bid only raises the current price by a certain set amount, which is based on the current price. For this Pikachu plushie, the current price is 6,500 JPY. This means that each bid will only raise the current price by 250 JPY at a time.

Current Price	Bid Increment
1 JPY ~ 999 JPY	10 JPY
1,000 JPY ~ 4,999 JPY	100 JPY
5,000 JPY ~ 9,999 JPY	250 JPY
10,000 JPY ~ 49,999 JPY	500 JPY
50,000 JPY and up	1,000 JPY

(You can read more about bid increments on Yahoo! Auctions Support Page)

So, when you enter your bid through us at 8,000 JPY, the first bid gets placed on your behalf at 6,750 JPY.

If someone outbids you, their bid would be for 7,000 JPY. But, since you entered a max bid higher than that, our auto-bidder bot automatically outbids them for 7,250 JPY. This keeps going until the auction ends or your maximum entered price of 8,000 JPY is reached, at which point our auto-bidder bot stops bidding on your behalf.

Make sense? Good! Oh, and of course, if you end up winning the auction for less than 8,000 JPY, the extra you entered will be refunded back to you!

Buy It Now Items

“But Emily!”, you say, “I found an item that says ‘Buy it Now’! What do I do?”

Never fear! We can buy these kinds of listings for you too! But there are a few things you should check first before bidding.

First, click on the link that says “> View actual website” here:

This will take you to the listing on the actual Yahoo! Auctions website. Once you’ve opened the actual listing, check the big reddish-orange button to the right.

Here it is zoomed in:

On this listing, the button says “今すぐ落札” which means “win the auction now”. These auctions can be bid on just like normal from the DEJAPAN page. The only difference is you win the auction immediately, like you’re purchasing the item, rather than bidding on it.

There’s one more type of buy now listing, though. Let’s say you open the listing page and check the reddish-orange button, but instead of “今すぐ落札”, it says this:

“購入手続きへ” means “proceed to purchase”. These listings are special, and have to be processed manually by our purchase team. You should still bid on them like normal through the DEJAPAN page. However, you should keep in mind that there will be a slight delay in the purchase being processed, especially if you submit your bid after our purchase team’s working hours of 9am to 6pm JST.

What about snipe bids?

Sniping bids are a special kind of bid that you can set to be placed 3, 5, or 10 minutes before the end of an auction. Other than that, they work exactly the same as normal bids. However, we generally don’t recommend placing sniping bids. A seller may choose to end an auction early, in which case your bid wouldn’t be placed at all! Also, if you place a sniping bid too close to the end of the auction, there’s a chance that our system may not be able to process the bid in time. Finally, by the time your sniping bid is placed, the price may have risen above the bid you entered anyway.

Generally, regular bids are the way to go.

Other things to look out for

There are a couple other things you might want to check before bidding on or buying a Yahoo! Auctions listing. 

First is seller reliability. We have a separate article talking about how to know if a seller is trustworthy or not.

The second thing to check is if the seller also operates a physical, brick-and-mortar store in Japan. You can tell this by looking at the item name on the listing page on Yahoo! Auctions:

See that little icon that says “ストア”? Let’s zoom in.

This icon indicates that the seller operates a physical store in Japan. These sellers charge the 10% Japanese sales tax separately from the item price. This means that during your 2nd payment checkout with us, this 10% charge shows up in our “Other Payment Fees” section. 

Third, you should know how to check the domestic shipping price!

We always recommend checking the actual Yahoo! Auctions listing for this. The shipping price will be listed on the right side, over the reddish-orange button for bidding/buying.

Domestic shipping is “送料” in Japanese.

This listing shows the shipping is “無料”, which means free!

Compare that to this listing, which shows that the shipping is 350 JPY for all of Japan “全国一律”.

Please note that if an auction is over 1,000 JPY, our purchase team may ask the seller to change the domestic shipping method to one that offers tracking, to ensure your item arrives safely at our warehouse. If this happens, the actual domestic shipping fee may be different from what was originally listed on the auction.

Finally, I want to draw your attention to a very important warning on our bidding screen:

There are some items we just can’t ship overseas, due to various restrictions. This includes things like perfume, car parts that have oil on them, guns, fireworks, certain types of leather… the list goes on. It is up to YOU as the customer to make sure that what you’re bidding on isn’t prohibited. We have a filter in place to block the majority of prohibited items, but sometimes things slip through. Please check the list of Prohibited Items before you bid on anything. If a prohibited item is won, we can’t ship or refund it.

If you ever have a question about whether or not an item is prohibited, feel free to ask us at contact@dejapan.com !

So I won an auction, now what?

Congratulations! All you have to do now is wait for your item to arrive at our warehouse.

What’s that? You won two auctions from the same seller and want them to be combined to save on domestic shipping?

Some sellers do offer this, but some don’t! If the seller does offer this service, the items will automatically be combined for domestic shipping. Unfortunately, we can’t ask a seller that doesn’t offer this service to combine items. Sorry!

Go forth and bid!

Now you’re an expert on all things Yahoo! Auctions! I hope this info helps you navigate the wonderful (and sometimes weird) world of Yahoo! Auctions! If you have any questions relating to Yahoo! Auctions, or anything else DEJAPAN, feel free to shoot us an email at contact@dejapan.com or leave a comment in the comments section down below!