buying the new Thomas plarail items from amazon.jp, my experience

Destination Realization

So, I live in the US, where importing stuff from other places can be expensive, I made it my mission to get 3 out of the 4 new plarail releases from amazon, those being, TS-12 Out Of Puff Thomas, Picture Book Snowy Thomas, and Picture Book Percy. Amazon had recently lowered the price of Snowy Thomas & Picture Book Percy to 3,355 and 3,694 yen compared to the standard 4,620 yen and still shows it to this day. My total before shipping was 9,909 yen but with shipping and import taxes, the price rose to 16,503 yen, still ok to me considering they will arrive to me between 5-7 days post Japanese release date. I’ll let you guys know how the process went during shipping and if Amazon is a reliable source then buying them from eBay sellers!

chrisjo

Amazon.jp has always worked fine for me when the seller is actually Amazon. It’s also been fine when it’s new goods and a 3rd party seller using the Amazon platform.

I have had a couple of mixed experiences, one when I failed to notice that the item was not listed as ‘new’, and I got it with no box, and another when I knew it was ‘used’ and took a risk - and what I got had missing and substituted parts.

Destination Realization

chrisjo yeah! I saw this before on a Reddit post, the seller is Amazon and is shipped by them

Destination Realization

Time to wait…

Destination Realization

just gonna put this out here, it’s MUCH, MUCH cheaper to buy these newer engines off Amazon JP, the price of tired thomas for me was 24.56 USD with the shipping and import taxes! If you just buy him alone, the price raises to 31 USD with everything, so if you live in the US and want to buy these engines, don’t buy them off eBay, you are just getting robbed, I’m already receiving the Thomas tomorrow! not that much of a wait.

MrKirby48

I’m buying Picture Book Thomas with snowplow and Out of Puff Thomas! I think they are the best ones from the new releases.

Destination Realization

It’s the end of an era, the big TOMY “1992 tomy” have been replaced or removed by this release, this is very sad to be honest.

Destination Realization

Smokebox mold has been changed too

Destination Realization

Gears have changed, are back to grey and have a completely different sound

Destination Realization

Front wheels have a different feel and “scrape” on the axel

Super

I like how they went to a clip in smokebox

jessetrains

Did you have any trouble/ hear anything from customs regarding your package?

Destination Realization

jessetrains nope, in fact all of customs was done in a day (it was 2 sundays ago)

chrisjo

When I buy from Amazon Japan, all UK VAT and customs duties are added on to the basket price when you go to check out. They aren’t specified as such, but you can see the difference between the quoted list prices of the items you put in your basket on the storefront and what you end up paying.

As a consequence everything bought from Amazon Japan sails through UK customs as if they don’t even exist. In fact if you look at the detailed tracking (it’s always DHL) you can see that UK customs clearance is completed before the goods even land in the UK.

I don’t know how it works for buyers in other countries of course, but as far as I’m concerned it works perfectly every time, which is very much not the case with shipments from other vendors that can be sitting in customs for weeks (24 days in a recent example) before they decide what extras might be payable.

jessetrains

Thanks for the info!