Retail vs prize vs kuji: why the figure you want was never in a shop, and what each channel costs second-hand in Japan right now

Something that took me embarrassingly long to understand as an overseas collector: "Japan figure store" is the wrong mental model. Japanese figures come out of four separate supply channels, and only one of them is a shop. 1) Retail. A maker announces a scale or a Nendoroid, hobby retailers open pre-orders, it is produced roughly to order, shipped once, and that is it. Miss the window and the retail channel is closed until a re-run is announced. 2) Prize (プライズ). Made for crane machines and supplied to arcade operators, not shops. The box literally says 非売品 (not for sale). There is no retail price, ever, so "is this a good price" can only be answered by the second-hand market. 3) Kuji (一番くじ). A paper lottery at convenience stores and hobby shops, run by BANDAI SPIRITS. The Last One prize and the A-prize figures are the ones people chase, and again there is no shelf price. 4) Second-hand chains (Mandarake, Suruga-ya) plus Mercari Japan and Yahoo! Auctions, which is where prize and kuji figures actually circulate. Mercari and Yahoo do not ship abroad, so that side goes through a forwarding/proxy service. To make the channel gap concrete I pulled one live Mercari Japan listing from each channel today (21 September), all currently in stock: - Retail line: Nendoroid #327 Isabelle (Animal Crossing: New Leaf), seller states 新品未開封 (new, sealed) - 5,200 yen (about $35.88). A sealed retail Nendoroid whose pre-order window closed years ago: this is the closed-window effect, the retail channel is gone so the second-hand market sets the price. - Kuji line: Ichiban Kuji Golden Kamuy, Sugimoto Saichi MASTERLISE, the Last One prize - 3,555 yen (about $24.53). Last One prizes only exist if you clear the whole kuji lot, so this is the price of someone else's gamble. - Prize line: Frieren (Sousou no Frieren) TAITO AMP+ crane-machine figure, seller states 未開封 (unopened) - 1,200 yen (about $8.28). That is the whole point of the prize channel: a figure of a current character for under ten dollars because the operator was never selling it. The words that decide price on the second-hand side are condition words, not "fake" worries: 新品未開封 (sealed), 開封済み (opened), 箱痛み (box damage). Learn those three and you can read any listing. If anyone wants the long version - who the actual shops are (AmiAmi, Good Smile's own store, Mandarake, Suruga-ya's overseas policy), which of them a foreign buyer can use directly, and the cheap route (proxy orders at retail) versus the cheapest route (second-hand + consolidated parcel) with the shipping maths - I wrote it up here: https://blog.onemall.jp/2026/08/11/japan-figure-store-2026-where-to-buy-japanese-figures-from-abroad/?ch=blog_japanfigurestore_exter The prize-figure search I used for the numbers above (goes through the forwarding service I buy with, so treat it as a price reference rather than a recommendation): https://www.onemall.jp/search?q=%E3%83%97%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%BA%20%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%82%AE%E3%83%A5%E3%82%A2&ch=blog_japanfigurestore_exter Curious how others here split their buying - do you mostly pre-order retail, or hunt prize/kuji pieces second-hand?