Proxy shopping through Japan has been my thing recently.
I have some hobby craft stuff nearby with the typical western boy tastes but nothings going to be carrying the more lewd tastes I have outside of Japan.

It's incredibly expensive though.
40,000¥ for a good quality tapestry
10$ of fees with JapanRabbit
30$ to ship (tariffs if you live in the land of unfreedom)
30$ in VAT
Just to get something to hang on your wall.

But you won't get it unless you head to JP yourself

I've been going to thrift stores for a while now. For the longest time I've been going, trying to find electronics things.

In the past few weeks, I've managed to pick up a few hard drives to stuff in my NAS. Interestingly, home/business security systems tend to be discarded regularly and they'll reliably have hard drives inside. To the untrained eye, they look just like a DVD player. I also snagged an SSD out of a PC that I thought about buying, but the CPU was rather old and too high power consumption to want to turn into a server. I also finally found a decent flat screen early- to mid-2000s CRT TV!

Lately, I've been taking much more of an interest in books. Often, you can get old and out-of-print books for only a few dollars. Like this one I found at a used bookstore! "An Introduction to Germany for Occupation Families". It was printed post-WWII for military families stationed in occupied Germany and goes over the temperament of German people, their history, and what they should expect to see once they arrive. A very fascinating little read for a book older than my parents!

I spend way too much time and money on second hand clothing from Japan, browsing online thrift stores, Yahoo auctions and the Mercari flea market. I've been collecting items from one particular brand for about 10 years and believe I have the largest collection of their early works including a one of thirty jacket. Outside that, the most interesting thing I've found was an artistic photobook about crossdressing and one about people's apartments taken during the 90's.

Brick and mortar thrift stores here typically don't have very good offerings. I would mainly be after camera stuff and scalpers usually pick those dry.

>>144754
¥40k seems incredibly expensive unless it's an enormous size. I've been meaning to get some artwork printed and framed for my PC room, but I'd do it at local print shops.

>>144855
40k is about standard for pixiv B2 sized. 100k lifesized. There's a lot of vendor markup to it I guess.

Mind you, it's not a low end product. The rendering is very nice and the fabric is good.

I got this a month or two ago off a local auction site, an IBM 5140 PC Convertible, the very first laptop ever made (depending on your definition).

It's in physically good, albeit non-functional condition, so I got it for relatively cheap. I only bought it to harvest the keyboard switches, to be honest, but I think I'll chuck in some cheap switches to replace them and then try my hand at repairing the thing because it's really quite neat. It doesn't take up nearly as much space as an actual vintage computer + a big ass CRT since it is ostensibly a portable PC, after all.

Just an old soviet analog rangefinder camera that more or less is a leica copy. Online auction.

Initially I was aiming for a yashica SLR, but buying old cameras from Japan can be complicated. Not only prices have gone up since 2020 due to high demand, but being a country with a very humid climate, most of them tend to have fungus in the lenses.

I-I don't really know where any thrift stores around me are. How do you go about finding them?

>>144918
VERY CAREFULLY

>>144758
I just pirate ebooks on my Kindle but I've been thinking of buying used paper copies of stuff I've already read to display on my bookshelf. I figure I've done the hard part of actually reading the books, I might as well spend a few bucks to balance out my apartment that's currently 90% anime decor.

>>144860
I imagine it's the only way to get it with the highest possible print resolution and you're supporting the artist too. It's not like it's a consumable either.

>>144905
Do you have any sample photos taken with it? And how much did you pay? I want to try and find an old SLR camera to play around with but trying to buy them from online auctions can be a bit intimidating.

>>144918
I normally just use Google Maps and search "thrift stores".

There are a few chain thrift stores in the US:
- Goodwill: Lots of clothes, holiday merchandise, kitchenware, kitchen appliances, miscellaneous electronics, some furniture, books, CD/DVDs, and vinyl records. Tends to be overpicked and heavily trafficked. Best value items are books in my opinion. Most are sold for <$4.
- Salvation Army Family Store: Lots of clothes, smaller miscellaneous selection than Goodwill, very large selection of furniture. Best value items are furniture; 25%, 50%, and 75% off after 7, 14, and 21-days of sitting unsold respectively.
- Uptown Cheapskate: Mostly focused on clothes
- Plato's Closet: Mostly focused on clothes
- Saver's Value Village: Similar to Goodwill. Never been to one, so can't give much of an opinion.

I once found a hentai DVD at a thrift store. Didn't buy it though because why would I?