Buying from yahoo auctions, mercari, and other auction sites

Edited

We can purchase items from auction sites. We can accept requests for traditional bids as well as buy-it-now.

Auction bidding policy (effective July 20, 2026)

When you place a bid, we charge a non-refundable bidding fee equal to 2% of your maximum bid amount.

If you win the auction, we'll purchase the item on your behalf and charge the remaining applicable costs, including the item price, service fees, and any domestic shipping charges. If you lose the auction, the order will be canceled, and the 2% bidding fee will not be refunded.

Fees

  • Yahoo Auctions, PayPay Flea Market, Fril (Rakuma): $5.00 per shop link. Since these must be processed individually, this fee applies per item link — even if you buy multiple items from the same seller.

  • Mercari: $3.00 per item, plus our service fee. This applies per item listing, even if a seller combines listings.

Add an item to your cart anytime to see a full quote with all service fees included, or see our Pricing page for details.


Mercari: How Bidding Works

Immediate maximum bid: Unlike Yahoo! Auctions, Mercari does not use automatic incremental bidding. If you place a bid of, for example, ¥20,000, the current bid jumps directly to ¥20,000. You pay the amount you bid, regardless of other bids.


Yahoo Auctions: How Bidding Works

Japan Rabbit's bidding system isn't live or automated, so we strongly recommend entering your true maximum bid upfront — inputting a low bid first and raising it later can cause you to lose the auction.

Why enter your max bid upfront: Yahoo Auctions don't work like TV or movie auctions. Once you set a max bid, it's automatically increased in small increments to stay ahead of competing bids — up to your limit. This means your final price is often lower than your max, even though you entered the full amount from the start.

Example:

  1. The auction starts at ¥10,000.

  2. You enter a max bid of ¥15,000 in Japan Rabbit.

  3. We enter this into Yahoo Auctions on your behalf. Your current bid becomes ¥10,500 (the minimum increment above the starting price).

  4. Another bidder sets a max bid of ¥12,000.

  5. Yahoo Auctions automatically raises your bid to ¥12,500 — still below your ¥15,000 max.

  6. The auction closes. Your final price is ¥12,500, plus any Japan Rabbit order fees (storage, service, and shipping calculated separately).

Automatic bidding increment

The automatic bidding increment depends on the current bid.

Current bid
Increment

1 to 999 JPY

10 JPY

1000 to 4999 JPY

100 JPY

5000 to 9999 JPY

250 JPY

10000 to 49999 JPY

500 JPY

50000 or more JPY

1000 JPY

Source: Yahoo! Japan Auctions Help

Changing your max bid

  • Before checkout: change it anytime while the item is still in your cart.

  • After checkout: let us know before 6 PM JST on the day the auction ends.
    Note that we may not be able to process a bid increase depending on email volume at the time, so it's always best to enter your true maximum bid at the time of bidding rather than relying on later increases.

Sniping protections

Sniping — placing a bid in the final minutes to try to win without giving others a chance to respond — is guarded against on Yahoo Auctions in two ways:

  • Auto-extension: a bid placed within 5 minutes of the auction's end automatically extends it by another 5 minutes, and the process repeats if more bids come in.

  • Max bid protection: your bid keeps auto-incrementing up to your set maximum, so a last-second bid can't beat you unless it exceeds your max.

Buy it now

Some auctions have a “buy it now” option. You can identify buy-it-now auctions, as they have a dark red button labeled 今すぐ落札.

The current bid price is in orange (現在). The buy-it-now price is shown below the bid price in black (即決).

If the buy-it-now price is within your budget, we recommend setting that price to quickly secure your items. Simply enter the buy-it-now price as your max bid in Japan Rabbit.

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