About & Method

What this is

YenVault is a personal project tracking one narrow question: what does the same retro game actually sell for in Japan versus in the US? It exists because the honest answer is usually "it depends on the condition, the shop, and the week" — and because most price-gap content online quietly mixes loose cartridges with boxed copies to make the gap look bigger.

How prices are collected

• US prices come from PriceCharting, which aggregates sold listings (mostly eBay). For Japan-only titles, the US figure is the import price of the Japanese version from PriceCharting's Japanese-release pages, and the row labels it as an import price.
• Japanese prices come from Book Off / Hard Off's online store, Suruga-ya, Mercari sold medians where a tracker publishes them, and specialist shop surveys (e.g. The Japan Hobbyist's store checks). Each row names its source.
• Loose and complete-in-box are separate rows, always. For disc-based systems, "loose" means disc only and CIB means case + manual + disc.
• Every price is a dated snapshot. The date in the cell is when the figure was recorded. Prices — especially PriceCharting's, which move daily — will have drifted since.
• All conversions use ¥150 = $1 so rows stay comparable with each other.

Known limitations

• Sold vs. asking. US figures are sold-based; Japanese figures are mostly asking prices. Ratios therefore flatter the gap somewhat. Treat them as guides.
• Shop variance is real. The same title can differ 3–4× between a suburban Book Off and a flagship tourist-district store. A single "Japan price" is always a simplification; rows note alternates where we found them.
• Some Japanese data is structurally missing. Disc-only prices for PlayStation and Saturn titles are rarely listed separately by Japanese shops, so several loose rows read "no data" rather than guessing.
• Reproductions pollute the data. For titles like Hagane, Pokémon Emerald and F-Zero Climax, fake cartridges circulate in volume and can drag recorded prices in both markets. Authentication (board photos, model numbers) matters more than any average.
• A big ratio is not the same as a big opportunity. A 50× ratio on a ¥528 game is a ¥30,000 difference; shipping, proxy fees and — since the US ended its $800 de minimis exemption on August 29, 2025 — possible duties eat small gaps entirely. This is why the guides keep steering you toward consolidated orders.

Update policy

The database is re-checked in batches rather than continuously. When a row is refreshed, its date changes; rows keep the date of the snapshot they came from. If you spot a figure that looks wrong, the likeliest explanations are a variant mix-up (original vs. re-release vs. Player's Choice) or a sold-out tracker recording a buyback price — both failure modes we flag in the rows when we catch them.

Disclaimer

Everything here is information about past and current listings, published for collectors comparing their options. It is not investment advice, not a promise that any price gap will persist, and not a live quote. Verify current listings, fees and import rules for your country before buying. This site currently carries no affiliate links; if that ever changes, it will be disclosed on this page.