Aomori has one card shop worth visiting. Most collectors never go. That's the advantage.
The Great Yorozuya Aomori Ono (4/5): decent Pokémon selection, solid prices. Not worth a detour alone, but worth a visit if you're already in the area.
Less foot traffic means less competition. Cards that disappear in an hour in Akihabara might sit in Aomori for days.
Sequence it: Sendai (Poke-do 5/5) then Aomori. A legitimate two-city Tohoku card leg. #Pokemon #Aomori #JapanTravel #Collecting
Argentina's World Cup Sticker Albums Are a Low-Tech Craze Immune to the Digital Revolution
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/world/americas/argentina-world-cup-sticker-albums.html
Mega Dream packs in Japan: where to find them at retail.
Card Shop Allium Osaka: 13,000 yen, no reservation, Tax Free. No friction.
Pokémon Centers: per-customer limits block scalpers. Hit multiple PKCs across multiple cities early.
Konbini (7-Eleven, Lawson, FamilyMart): packs at MSRP. Check the card rack near the registers.
Western markets inflate Mega Dream significantly. Japan retail access is wider than it looks from outside. #Pokemon #PokemonTCG #JapanTravel #Collecting
Japan Tax Free changes November 1, 2026. What it means for Pokémon collectors.
Currently: show passport at checkout, get 9% deducted immediately.
After November 2026: pay full price at checkout, claim refund at the airport before departure. Keep every Tax Free receipt organized. Budget extra airport time. Bring enough yen to cover full price upfront.
The refund amount doesn't change. The logistics do.
Go before November if you want the simpler system. #Pokemon #JapanTravel #Collecting
Dragon Star Namba Osaka has a bulk AR deal: buy 200 cards, get bulk pricing.
For most collectors, 200 AR cards is too many. For Whatnot streamers, bulk box builders, or resellers, this pricing tier is genuinely attractive.
Japan's AR (Alternate Rare) cards fetch premium prices in the West for their art quality. Buying 200+ at bulk and selling individually abroad is a real arbitrage play.
4/5. The specialist find for resellers. #Pokemon #Osaka #PokemonTCG #Collecting
PSA slabs in Japan: the market looks different from eBay.
Most Japanese card shops focus on raw singles. Graded cards are underrepresented in physical retail.
The exceptions: Snkrdunk Akihabara (4.5/5), best slab shop in Japan, Tax Free, enormous selection. PDG across multiple cities. Hihi Shouten Osaka (4.25/5), negotiable prices. Card Stock Osaka (4/5), curated selection.
Research specific cards before assuming Japan is cheaper on graded product. #Pokemon #PokemonTCG #Collecting
Best Watch Company Logos, Part 3
17. Zodiac’s Compass
This is symmetrical & geometric, two things I love in a logo. It scales up & down pretty well and it is pretty recognizable. This is one of the newer logos on my list, debuting in 1953 with Zodiac’s introduction of the Sea Wolf (before the Submariner, BTW), and soon became the entire brand logo. I hope Zodiac can be revived yet again (yes, it’s a bit of a Zombie brand), but it may just be their fate to remain dead. Being unfortunately tied to Northern California’s notorious Zodiac Killer from the 70’s probably complicates things.
What do you think? Does the Zodiac logo make your list as a favorite or as a not-favorite?
#AmWriting #collecting #hobbies #Horology #rolex #submariner #Watches #writing #Zodiac
Waiting for the Trade
The current tenuous situation with Fallen Angel reminds me of one of those curiosities of the comic book market: the relationship between episodes in magazine form and longer stories in book form. Most comics in the US/Canadian market are released as individual issues, with maybe 22 pages of story and a bunch of ads. Longer works are often released as trade paperbacks (TPBs), but often don't sell as well because, let's face it, $19.95 is a much bigger chunk of change than $2.50. However, many series are collected into TPBs once the publisher figures the original issues have mostly been tapped out, often adding additional material like sketches, character designs, or occasionally an entire epilogue. (Kingdom Come and Death: The High Cost of Living both used that trick.) Advantages: they fit on a shelf, they're often better paper and more durable, you can get an entire 6-part story in one chunk... and most importantly, they can fit on bookstores' shelves, bringing them to an entirely new audience. During the 1990s, only the most popular storylines would get the TPB treatment, but as the graphic novel market has grown, the trend has been toward collecting every issue of a series, so that whether you get the original issues or the collections, you still get everything. This has led to two controversial phenomena: writing for the trade and waiting for the trade. […]Don't speak Japanese? Here's what you actually need for 301 shops across 20 cities.
Navigation: Google Maps link, verified floor number, storefront photo for every shop. No Japanese needed to find any of them.
Showcase access: "Sumimasen, showcase onegaishimasu." Just saying "showcase" usually works.
Everything else: Google Translate camera reads Japanese in real time.
Guide available in 27 languages. Staff across Japan are patient with foreign visitors. #Pokemon #JapanTravel #Collecting
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