MP-51 Arcee at Zing/EB

[DaptoDog]

Using the official exchange rate is not the real rate. That's the mid-point between the two exchange rates (AU to Yen and Yen to AU). A bank, credit card or paypal will have a rate that is about 5% off, or for the yen it is about 5 off (64yen instead of the current official rate of 69yen), which gives us about AU$250 (what it would actually cost you if you cart and pay for it at 16,000yen).
And since some online stores offer pre-order discounts, I always refer to the official "retail" price if there is one, otherwise it gets confusing (and takes time) to list a range of online prices.



The GST is one thing I keep forgetting to note, as it would make this toy about AU$270 when comparing to the (non-GST) listed price on foreign sites. It actually makes the EB Games price even better, as the $30 difference to the Japanese retail price (or 10%) is a lot better than the 40-60% difference we have on our regular retail Hasbro Transformers toys (Generations, Studio Series, Cyberverse, etc).
Fortunately, people on here and on our facebook page are being mature and intelligent enough to not criticise EB Games for a price that is not their fault... it's TakaraTomy's fault.

There are ways of getting very close to the mid rate that are not all that difficult and worthwhile for those importing regularly. I have a separate debit card account with Citibank that has zero fx fees, the exchange rate uses the official Mastercard rates (pretty close to the rates you see on Google). Case in point, I made an order with atmos in Yen on 29 March. Citi converted it at 66.15 vs 66.33 on Google for the same day.

I haven't been happy with Citi on my recent chargeback debacle so I'm switching to the same type of account with UBank (part of NAB). ING Direct and Macquarie offer similar debit accounts and there is also a new CBA credit card with zero FX fees for example.

Even if you had to pay the standard 3% fx fee on a credit card I struggle to see how you wouldn't do substantially better than the ~7% implied fee you are suggesting for Yen. What you definitely want to avoid is Paypal converting the currency, you WILL get screwed royally. There is an option in the settings to have your card provider do the conversion - this should always be ticked.

Fair call on wanting to use the RRP for comparison. However, to me apples to apples would be comparing the pre-order discounted prices with EB since they are both pre-orders. The discounts are given as incentive to lock-in orders well in advance of the release. I think importing from discounted sources should save a fair bit of money off the EB price even ignoring the benefits of avoiding GST with certain online sites. Regardless, if people want to buy local to have peace of mind on returns then that's their choice.

[Ralph Wiggum]

I?m quietly confident other retailers will have her cheaper, even taking into account exchange rates and shipping. Zing isn?t the best for timeliness either.

Basically what I?m saying is that its way too early to pull the trigger on Arcee in the absence of other retailers listing their prices.

[The Letter M]

Spoke to someone at EB who told me they'd sold out of their allocation. Not entirely convinced that's the case though.

[griffin]

Unless the item has a really limited production number, there might be allocations to retailers like EB Games, but these JP Transformers are only ordered after the 2 week pre-order period.
But I'll ask.

[The Letter M]

Yeah. Given it's not up anywhere else, I'm inclined to think that Takara or Hasbro jumped up and down.

[Seraphim Prime]

Yeah - the listing appears to have been taken down. Maybe they were called out for being too early. Spinout is still up.

[Krayt]

It’s still in their internal computer systems.... and no messages received by my local that my preorder was dead

[reillyd]

To me, the chest area looks really out for some reason...it looks very wrong. The generations arcee looks better.

I can guarantee there will be a third party replacement for it Graza if you're not happy. Look what happened to the poor FansToys versi.on and her 'upgrade'.
I will be very happy sticking with the Takara version. I would have bought it locally in case there are QC issues, but if she doesn't come back up shortly I'll have to import it.
Arcee has always been one of my favourite characters from the '86 movie. I don't know that I'd pay that sort of price for other characters (e.g. Elita-1) but for Arcee...... sigh.....

[graza78]

I can guarantee there will be a third party replacement for it Graza if you're not happy. Look what happened to the poor FansToys versi.on and her 'upgrade'.
I will be very happy sticking with the Takara version. I would have bought it locally in case there are QC issues, but if she doesn't come back up shortly I'll have to import it.
Arcee has always been one of my favourite characters from the '86 movie. I don't know that I'd pay that sort of price for other characters (e.g. Elita-1) but for Arcee...... sigh.....

The fanstoys version still looks alright on the shelf; pretty sure it came with an interchangeable chest piece. That "upgrade" set was pretty odd and unnecessary.

Not sure a 3rd party can fix the official unless people are willing to pop the chest pin out. Regardless if its anatomically correct or not, it doesnt look like arcee in the movie...her chest wasn't that far down from her neck. Looks like takara took cues from grave hag in the witcher

[DaptoDog]

Oh My Primus comes through with Arcee at S$170 (A$185) shipped. Even if you add GST to level the playing field with EB/Zing the local price is still ~$100 more.