Forget Grailed. Japanese auction sites are where it's at.

As broke college students, initially, our options seem limited for enthusiasts of high fashion and coveted streetwear. One can either save up a months pay only to blow it on one grail item, leaving you to stretch out what little is left until the next paycheck. Or, as many of us do, we turn to the second-hand fashion Mecca that is Grailed. But given its rapid growth due to an ever increasing profile within the emerging online fashion community, the race to find steals shows no signs of slowing down. The prospective buyer pool gets bigger while the inventory of items slowly diminishes.

And there’s something to be said for the mentality of sellers on what they see as a high-profile platform. Let's face it, anyone selling anything on Grailed wants and thinks they deserve a tasty profit. Therefore, prices on an item are set high as we pray for the price to drop. But this can take days or weeks of careful waiting. And once it comes down to a reasonable price, you’re at risk of one of the dozens of other people watching the listing snatching up your grail before you. But no fear Mr. or Mrs. Minimum Wage.

Besides being a broke fashion and streetwear enthusiast, I am also a broke vintage watch collector who specializes in Seiko, a Japanese watch brand. While I have come across amazing deals on eBay, I thought I would have better luck sourcing my pieces straight from the Japanese market. This is how I came across something called Yahoo! Japan and its many proxy services.

Yahoo! Japan is pretty much Japan’s eBay. It is their most popular auction site. But the catch is that it can only be used by Japanese residents. The website is in Japanese. Sellers can only ship within the country. And one can only buy items in Japanese Yen.

This is where proxy sites come in. There are a number of services that will allow you to buy things. I personally use Buyee. Therefore, all opinions on this topic will be based on my experiences with this specific service.

The way these proxy services work is that they provide a mirrored view of Yahoo Japan that is fairly intuitive to westerners. They convert all prices into USD with an added buyers fee and you have the ability to translate listings and their descriptions into English. If you buy an item, the seller will ship it to the proxy service where they can hold it and other items you buy for a period of up to a month if you so choose. Once you’re ready to have it shipped, they provide you with a variety of shipping options which vary in price depending on how long it takes.

The fees associated with the service are quite cheap considering what they provide. It has never been a barrier preventing me from buying an item. The only things one needs to be wary about is the fact that you cannot message sellers about items. And returns are not an option as you are buying from a third party. So screen the seller and do your due diligence in regards to items that are heavily faked. But if you know where and how to look for items, this shouldn't be that much of an issue.

That part about knowing where and how does not take much effort to master. You need to enter in quite broad search terms in order to get what you’re after because of the listings being in Japanese. Therefore, you are tasked with sifting through hundreds of listings in some cases. The proxy makes things slightly easier with the ability to filter listings through categories. And in some cases once you have selected the “fashion” filter and specified which article of clothing you’re after, filtering by certain brands is available.

This may seem daunting and tedious to some, but the payoff is definitely worth it. Shown below are some interesting listings that came up after searching just by brand names through the fashion category filter. The variety and sheer volume of items available is greater than whatever Depop or Grailed have to offer. You can literally spend hours upon hours browsing listings as I have many times.

Here’s one for all you vintage 'preme heads out there

I dare someone to find something from a 10 year-old Undercover collection for this price

A Kapital knit cardigan for under $100?!?!?!?!?!

I think deadstock pre-SB Dunks speak for themselves

As seen in the above selection, there are a lot of new old stock items and vintage pieces for sale which are rarely seen in the West. Therefore, if you are someone keen on building an archive, proxy services for Yahoo! Japan would be perfect for you. Or if you are like me and don't want to be a slave to the retail or resale market.