よくある質問
FAQ
The questions a US buyer actually asks about Japanese sealed product — answered without the hedging.
Last updated
If your question is not here, email tokyolegends@outlook.com — a person reads that address and the answer usually comes back the same working day.
Product and authenticity
- Is this product authentic?
- Yes. Everything we sell is genuine Japanese-market product bought inside Japan through established supply channels and verified before it is exported — manufacturer shrink intact, JAN barcode checked against the printing, case seals and lot markings inspected. We do not buy from open marketplaces and we do not deal in resealed or repackaged product. Three SKUs on our own supplier price list are withheld from this site entirely pending barcode confirmation, and they will stay withheld until it is in writing.
- Why Japanese product rather than English?
- Three reasons, and they are commercial rather than sentimental. Japanese sets print sooner — Japan is the origin market, so a set exists there months before its English counterpart. Japanese packs run at a lower price per pack with a well-understood distribution, which is why breakers favour them. And a large body of Japanese cards has no English print at all: the CHR and CSR grades, most promo and campaign product, and whole set concepts that never crossed over. You cannot buy those from a domestic distributor at any price.
- Do you sell single cards?
- No. We wholesale sealed booster boxes. The card pages on this site exist so you can see what is inside a set before you commit to a case of it — they are a catalogue, not a shop. Nothing on a card page is for sale.
- What do the rarity stamps mean? AR, SR, SAR, UR, CHR, CSR…
- Japanese cards grade on a ladder the English game does not have, and — this is the part that costs people money — the same letters mean different things on the two.
- AR (アートレア, Art Rare) — full-illustration art on a standard-rarity card. English calls the equivalent an Illustration Rare.
- SR (スーパーレア, Super Rare) — the full-art ex or Trainer. This is what English marketing calls an Ultra Rare, which is where the confusion starts.
- SAR (スペシャルアートレア, Special Art Rare) — the extended special illustration; the English Special Illustration Rare.
- UR (ウルトラレア) — on a Japanese card this is the goldsecret card at the very top of the set, not the English “Ultra Rare”. English calls it a Hyper Rare.
- CHR (キャラクターレア, Character Rare) — a Japan-only grade with no English print whatsoever.
- CSR (キャラクタースーパーレア, Character Super Rare) — likewise Japan-only, and the scarcer of the two.
Prices
- Are the card values on this site US market prices?
- No, and we will not pretend otherwise. The card values we show are Cardmarket European averages, denominated in euros and converted to dollars at a dated reference rate. There is no US price available upstream for Japanese cards — the TCGplayer field our data source carries is empty for them, in every sample we have taken — so converting the European average is the only honest number we can put in front of you. Treat it as context on relative scarcity, not as what a card sells for in Ohio.
- Why does a price sometimes show as an em dash?
- An — means we have no tracked value for that card, and we would rather show you nothing than a number we invented. It happens for two reasons: the upstream marketplace has no recorded average for that card — normal for a set that has only just dropped, and common across Japan-exclusive promos that trade thinly — or no dated exchange rate is available to convert with. We never interpolate a missing price from neighbouring cards, and we never estimate one from a set average. The same rule governs the “below market” badge on product pages: where there is no reference figure, the badge renders nothing at all rather than a hollow 0%.
- Why is there no price on any of the boxes?
- Because a printed number would be either stale or the worst one we would ever charge. Wholesale cost and stock move week to week, and the old catalogue showed the walk-up price — what one box costs a visitor with no account — on every tile, which is the highest price in the building. Every box is quoted per order against stock we have confirmed. Send us what you are being offered elsewhere, with a link, on the Price Match or Beat form, and we come back under it or tell you straight that we cannot. No account needed to ask.
- Do I get a better price for buying more?
- Usually, yes — volume is most of what moves a quote, along with how current the set is and what we can source that week. We will not put a ladder of numbers on the site, because the honest answer depends on all three and we would rather give you the real one. Tell us the quantity in the same message as the price you are trying to beat.
Ordering
- Is there a minimum order quantity?
- Nothing you have to reach before you can ask. Single boxes are quoted and so are cases; the quantity changes the number, not whether we will talk to you. Sets differ in how they case up, which is part of why the answer is per order rather than printed.
- How does quoting work?
- You send the box, the quantity, and the price you are being offered with a link to it. We check we can actually source it, then come back with a written quote, valid 7 days, and you pay against the invoice. Freight, duty and handling are billed at cost on top — nobody can know those at the instant you press a button, and quoting a total that ignored them would be inventing a landed price. Start at Price Match or Beat.
- How do I pay?
- Card orders are taken through Stripe— Visa, Mastercard and American Express — on Stripe’s own hosted checkout. Your card number never touches our servers. Quoted wholesale orders are invoiced, and the accepted payment methods and terms are stated on the invoice itself.
- What are the lead times?
- Card orders leave within 1–2 business days of payment clearing; quoted orders within 2–5 business days of the invoice being paid. Transit from Japan is typically 3–7 business days by tracked courier, plus customs. Allocated and pre-release product moves on the Japanese street date and not before. Full detail, including the Golden Week and New Year closures that swallow a week of Japanese logistics, is on Shipping & Returns.
- Is shipping really free?
- Over $500.00 on card orders, yes. Not on quoted wholesale orders, which always carry freight at cost. And never duty: import duty and any carrier handling fee are invoiced to you at cost with the paperwork attached. No figure on this site is a landed total.
- Can I return a box?
- Unopened, unmarked, resalable boxes: within 14 days, with written authorisation, at your freight cost and a 15% restocking fee. Opened boxes: never — once the shrink is broken nobody can verify the contents, and a wholesaler that took opened returns would be feeding searched product into other customers’ orders. Damage or shortage in transit is a different thing entirely and has its own 5 business-day claim window.
Wholesale accounts
- How do I get a wholesale account, and how long does approval take?
- Apply at /wholesale/apply with your business name, contact details and resale certificate number, or send an inquiry if you would rather not open an account yet. A person reads every application — there is no automated scoring — and we usually come back within 1–2 business days. Approval sets the tier on your account, which is what your pricing is calculated from.
- What can I do with the product once I have bought it?
- Resell it, rip it on stream, put it in your display case. You buy for resale and you resell in your own name, on your own terms, at your own prices. What you may not do is describe yourself as an agent, distributor or authorised partner of Tokyo Legends, or of Nintendo or The Pokémon Company — we are none of those things and neither are you by virtue of buying from us.
- Where does the collection tracker store what I tick?
- In your browser, and nowhere else. The set pages let you tick cards as owned; each set writes one
tl:owned:<setId>entry into your browser’slocalStorage. It is never sent to us, we have no copy of it and we cannot see it — which also means it does not follow you to another device, and clearing your site data erases it permanently. Your theme choice (tl-theme) and your cart (tl-cart) live in the same place; the cart reaches our server only when you start a checkout or ask for a quote. See the Privacy Policy for the whole picture.
Still stuck? Contact us — or read the Terms of Sale and Shipping & Returns, which are the binding versions of several of the answers above.