alafista.com

Great news for figure collectors who always wanted to bid for those rare items on Yahoo Auction JP but just understand a single word of Japanese. The 2 auction giants: Yahoo Japan Corp. and eBay Inc. has agreed to team up in online auctions, planning services that will allow shoppers to bid for items from the U.S. and Japan.

Yahoo! has said that they have plans by March 2008 for Japanese to be able to bid for items up for sale on eBay through the Yahoo auction site in Japan.

By the middle of next year, similarly, a site will be set up that will allow Americans to buy Yahoo Japan auction items through the eBay site.

The deal is to facilitate “cross-border trading” and invigorate the online auction market.

EBay and Yahoo Japan — collaborating for the first time — also launched a separate Web site called Sekaimon, which means “global shopping” in Japanese. The online Sekaimon site will translate items on listed on eBay into Japanese and help with payments, shipping and customs clearance for Japanese shoppers, both sides said. Revenue from Sekaimon will be shared, they said, while not disclosing the terms.

Americans using eBay will be able to more easily buy Japanese goods popular abroad, such as “manga” comic books, CDs, and products that feature Japanese animation characters and other mascots, it said.

Source: Mainichi JP

This definitely looks promising. Seems like it would be much easier for figure collectors like me will be able to bid for items on those Yahoo Japan auction. (≧∇≦)/