This will probably not interest anyone other than me, but since my wife doesn't care and I need to tell someone, Card Talk gets stuck with it! Warning: this will be a wall of text!

Way back on August 23, 2008 I posted a plea to Card Talkers. I am a big fan of the Japanese voice actress and singer Aya Hirano. I love her (If there are any anime fans out there, she is probably best known as the voice of Haruhi Suzumiya in the show 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'.) They came out with a set of Aya cards, and while there were tons of them on Yahoo! Japan auctions, there were literally no people willing to ship to the US. I asked Card Talk for help on finding Japanese cards, and while I got a lot of leads, none of them panned out... except for one tip that I got from sumozilla (I'm name dropping here so he will hopefully see his name and know how grateful I am). Thanks to the person he put me in contact with, I was able to get a base set and one of the costume cards -- however, boxes were pushing $200+ by then, and autograph cards were about $1,000.

Flash forward to December 2010. I would sometimes check Yahoo! auctions when I was bored at work, and I saw that there was another Aya Hirano set coming in early January. I bookmarked the one site I found that would sell to the US (no preorders, I had to buy once they were released), saved the money I got for Xmas from the in-laws, and waited... The day rolls around for them to go on sale, I log in... OUT OF STOCK which was then changed to OUT OF PRINT. I emailed my contact, no response.

A few weeks later, I get an email from the contact. He changed email addresses but checked the old one for some reason. I check Yahoo! Auctions and there happens to be an Aya autograph card that is priced about ¥30,000 ($300+) cheaper than the others. I email him, he bids, and then I wake up the next day... we won the card!

So, 2.5 years later, all the way from Japan, after battling the language barrier and the unwillingness of the entire country of Japan to take my money, here she is:



Just for fun, here are my three 'I get buried with these' cards (the Pine and Anderson are pack pulled):




tl;dr I found a card I have wanted for a long time for less than $100, hurray

Very nice! Great to see that you found a card that you loved to fill that hole. I know how it can be to try and find one card to finish a set or just a card that you really want. GRATZ!!!

Congratulations, that's a nice looking autograph card! What's next on the list?

Ahh, the thrill of the hunt.
Like me...you have an understanding wife.
Congrats on both.

Aya Carumba, thats dedication for you. I remember doing something very similar when i wanted a scorpion king promo that was only in the japanese cd soundtrack.

I got it and it feels great because you had to do so much to get it so congrats to you, i know how you feel.

Great story. I'm glad your persistence paid off.

Great story and delighted that you got a positive result.

That's a great story! And I'm STILL looking for that SCORPION KING promo!

By the way - love those Pine and Anderson cards too!

Congrats

Happy to know i'm useful for something
sumo
ps please tell my wife

Congrats on getting that card!! And the hunt makes for a cool story!!

Congrats!!!!

That is a great story... Those are the best stories to share here!

I find patience is always a virtue in this hobby when you are looking for someting rare/expensive/obscure. Glad to hear the perseverence paid off!

The Gillian Anderson auto is very nice as well.

Thanks everyone. I think that next I will start putting a few bucks aside each check so that I can get one of the Daniel Craig Bond autos. I was thinking of trying to get autographs of all of the major cast from Star Trek DS9, but I know I would just end up spending more than I want to whenever I see them instead of searching for deals.

Don't you just love card stories with happy endings... that don't involve someone's holy grail being a card you just got sniped on!

Congrat's! I've been working on a 94/95 hockey set, 570 card insert set at one per box, 2 series'. Need one common card from each. Guess when I started collecting it? Lol.

--Chris

Congrats !!!!!!!!!! And I'm a half year old today !!!!!!!!! Half a small piece of no sugar cake and I cut a candle in half.

quote:

Originally posted by Jason00:
Thanks everyone.

I did a search for Aya Hirano on eBay and there is a costume card for her available.... Do you have one of those???

quote:

Originally posted by MarcG:
I did a search for Aya Hirano on eBay and there is a costume card for her available.... Do you have one of those???

I do have two of them, yeah. The one on eBay seems to only go for about $10 on Yahoo! Japan, and it's $40 on eBay. I think he wants someone who can't buy the card on Yahoo! to overspend out of desperation.