Hi all,
I've decided to start early on my spring cleaning, so I offloaded a box of miscellaneous merchandise at my local Surugaya yesterday. They gave me a grand total of… ¥50 for everything, despite it mostly being new items bought in the last year, almost all blind box or arcade goods from fairly popular IPs. Obviously, I wasn't expecting much return—I'd sell on Mercari if it were a money thing—but I'd estimate everything to have run me around ¥2万 when I bought it new, so I'm pretty shocked.
The staff member told me he could only give ¥1 back per non-identifiable item (stuff without tags/barcodes), which I agreed to, because there was plenty of stuff in the box that was identifiable and brand-new, so I assumed they would be appraised separately. But after registering my membership and like 2 minutes of looking over my items, I was only given a receipt for the buyback and ¥50 in cash for apparently 50 total items, before getting hit with the 以上です lol. No waiting number or "we'll call you in a few days" to suggest that there'd be further appraisal done. This was new merch for Chiikawa, Ghibli, big shonen manga titles, etc., so it's not like it was total junk?
I've sold things before at Book Off, for pretty minimal return on what I paid for it—which again, whatever, it's fine—but ¥1 per item across the board is an insane rate. I know you can apply for online appraisals beforehand, but I've never had issues with in-person appraisal before. Book Off has at least taken the time to give me fair appraisals of all individual items, and I've gotten at least some of my money back through repurchase. I'm crossing my fingers that I just misunderstood something in the interaction and that there's a further appraisal pending that they'll call me about at a later date, but…
Haven't been able to find any clear information on Surugaya's website about their buyback policies, and I don't have time this week to go back to clarify in-person. Has anyone else experienced something similar? Did I actually misunderstand the sales process, or do I just have to absorb that loss and stick to Book Off in the future?
I'd appreciate any insight if people have any, thanks!!
by jeansverse