International Shopping - widberg/fmtk GitHub Wiki

This wiki page about shopping may seem out of place among the other, more clearly Zouna-related information, but I promise it is very important. After a long enough time modding a game, there will come a time when you want to start collecting releases of that game in foreign countries. Either just for the sake of collecting or in the hopes that there are development artifacts like debug symbols left on the disc. Or if you're lucky, there might be press previews or early demos available, sometimes only for sale on second-hand stores in the country where the game was developed. If you're into magazines, you might be able to find ones with articles about the game for sale overseas. All of the above were true for me with FUEL. This page only lists websites and services that members of the community or I have used. Thankfully, it has only been good experiences so far, but if I do come across a bad website or service, I will call that out here.

If you find something interesting, let me know! I would be more than happy to pay for it and dump/scan it myself. See The Zouna Fund wiki page.

Second-Hand Websites

Keep in mind that a lot of these websites will show you different products for sale depending on what country they think you are in, so consider changing the TLD, using a VPN, or otherwise looking for the version of the site you think you'd have the best luck on. If you can't VPN into the exact country, usually a neighboring country is fine; sometimes just being on the same continent is enough. In extreme cases, consider using a country that has a positive political relationship with the desired country. Even if a seller says they won't ship to you, they can usually be convinced by money if you message them. If they are likely to have a first language that isn't English, you might want to machine translate the message and send that along with the original in English incase the machine translation is rought but they speak English.

eBay

eBay should be familiar to most Americans.

Rakuten

Like eBay. If shipping from Europe to the United States of America, make sure you pay enough for shipping, for some reason, it underestimates international shipping costs, and that pissed off sellers.

Vinted

Like eBay. The French version of the site is a gold mine for Asobo stuff.

Ruten

Taiwanese eBay. Be aware that the Taiwanese versions of games are likely to be bootlegs of the European release with obviously edited box art.

Avito

Russian eBay.

OLX.ua

Ukrainian eBay.

Retrobroker

Very specifically for video games.

Yahoo! Auctions

Good for Japan. ZenMarket has a built-in Yahoo! Auctions Japan Search and Translator.

Proxy Shipping

A lot of second-hand websites won't ship directly to your home country. The solution to this is to have them ship it to someone in a country where they offer shipping, and then have that person ship it to you via international mail. This process is called proxy shipping, and the middleman is called the proxy. Many more formal proxy shipping companies allow you to purchase popular products directly on their website. However, if a product is not listed, you can usually send them a link to the product on another website. You will probably have to find a solution that works for you, depending on the source and destination countries, as well as the website on which the product is sold.

Keep in mind that the proxy doesn't need to be located in the exact country where the product is sold. Often, countries in the EU will offer shipping to each other but not to the United States of America. So even if a product is sold on Vinted.fr, a Dutch proxy may be able to help.

This service can be expensive because the proxy is: 1) doing a currency exchange, 2) coordinating with the seller of the product to purchase it, 3) paying for the product and the cost of shipping to their (ware)house, 4) using up space in their (ware)house to store the product before it is shipped to you, 5) shipping the product internationally to you, 6) paying any taxes or tarrifs associated with international shipping. There often isn't a way around using a proxy if you aren't able to message the seller directly and work something out, so the high price can be worth it.

r/internationalshopper

You can make a post asking if anyone can help you with shipping. Make sure to mention the source and destination countries, as well as the rough size of the package. Be very careful when working with anyone on here. Read lots of public reviews for the user you are trusting, check that the reviews were left by active Reddit accounts, and don't trust any screenshots of messages potential proxies might send you.

u/robinrobot

u/robinrobot helped me ship some games from France to the United States of America. He is located in the Netherlands but can access Vinted.fr and other European websites. He can be trusted with relatively large dollar value orders and offers extremely reasonable rates compared to more formal proxies.