The very reason I booked a hotel in Akihabara was to maximize the shopping potential of this place. On every previous visit to Akihabara, bags would fill, bodies would tire, and senses would be overwhelmed. Inevitably this would mean a return to the hotel to refresh, but since my hotel is right here this means I can have a rest stop and then head right back out into the wonderland. Yesterday that’s exactly what I did.
The rain was pervasive, but this only served to diminish the crowds (somewhat) and didn’t bother me. I ended up shopping for about 8.5 hours, visiting dozens and dozens of stores including some on higher levels of buildings that were only accessible by stairs.
It was, for me, a close to perfect day. I saw a lot of wide-eyed tourists standing around overwhelmed and thought “That was me over 20 years ago.” Now I’m an old hand, and navigate these streets like a local. Even the maids reached out to me, and they usually ignore foreigners 🙂
So what did I buy? Lots of books, games, gacha toys, trading cards and other otaku stuff. Wonderful things in other words, including some that were special, and a few that are even ‘holy grail’ items for my collections. One thing in particular almost made me pass out with surprise when I saw it, and I’m sure I set some sort of speed record grabbing it off the shelf! In time I’m sure you’ll see them all on this very blog. Today I’ll showcase – as I do – some of the items I didn’t buy 🙂
Let’s start with the above. I haven’t seen an actual Black Lotus (the most expensive Magic The Gathering card) in many years, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen an Alpha version. And yet yesterday I could have just bought one for about $111,000. Or an Alpha booster pack for about $35,000! The same store had dozens of ‘power’ and dual lands, and even sealed boxes of older sets. Incredible!
Speaking of cards, I also saw the above Pokemon card for about $45k. I don’t know much about the Pokémon card game, but a quick search showed this was a card depicting the Pokémon company president that he gave out to friends. As few as 30 exist!
One store I went into had an exhibition of superbly build model kits and the above stood above all of them in my opinion. The artist used some sort of reflective metallic paint that seemed to change colour depending on the viewing angle. It was absolutely beautiful, and his comment (on the card) which read: “I did my best.” may be the understatement of the year!
Quick, someone tell Jonathon Ross there’s a boxed Micronaut for sale at Mandarake 😉
The retro game market has exploded these past few years, which is one of several reasons I’ve sold half my collection. And yet it’s still extraordinary to walk into a shop and see things like this Famicom (NES) cart for ~$2500. I’m always looking for Wizardry games (it’s the series I collect) and they’ve become rare now, but I saw cart-only examples of games (I own mint-in-box) for hundreds yesterday. I’m happy I was into this stuff decades ago.
Speaking of games I was finally able to visit Beep, a small retro game store with a focus on old Japanese PCs and arcade games. It was an amazing dungeon of treasures, and had a vast array of (working!) old Japanese home computers for sale, as well as dozens of arcade boards and even modern tech to play them on your TV. They had a library of old game guides (which I bought a few books from) and they also had these two items I didn’t buy:
Both of these date to the late 1980s and were for the Wizardry tabletop RPG (like D&D). At over $300 for the metal dragon figure and $200 for the ‘module’ you’d need deep pockets indeed to shell out for this pair. Still it was a treat to see an example of a Wizardry RPG book, which I’d never seen before.
I had breakfast, lunch and dinner in Akiba yesterday (all at fine dining establishment, I assure you) and took frequent breaks in air-conditioned arcades and drunk lots of water. I even had two rest stops back at my hotel. But at the end of the day I was still absolutely ruined which is why this blog entry waited for this morning. I didn’t visit every shop I planned to, nor buy everything I wanted to, so I’ll absolutely be back to Akihabara this trip. Look forward to another post like this one in a few days 🙂