Intl Sales: Ideas?

Greetings to all! :)

I'm a collector based in the US, and after having recently discovered the abundance of pieces available from sites such as Yahoo! Japan auctions, I'm curious: how might a collector such as myself go about taking advantage of these sorts of avenues?

I've been playing around on service sites such as Rinkya, but dang, they're really not much help. Any ideas?

Anyone in Japan wanna help a guy out? :)

Rinkya is one of many shopping services out there to buy on japanese sites like yhj, that don't generally have international shipping available.

There's also celga, shopping mall japan, rinkya (which you say you looked into), japonica, japamart, crescent shop, and many others.
Honestly, you'll have to see for yourself and your particular buying habits which ones are most economical for you. I find that Celga is great for posters, while I like SMJ for toys and Japonica for clothes due to fee structure and shipping time.

Once you find which one you like, you sign up and depending on the company, may or may not need to have a deposit in order to bid a certain amount on auctions.

I've been using shopping mall japan recently as I find fees they charge generally more reasonable compare to other proxies. for them, basically you 1. sign up.
2. deposit amount money with them using paypal to at least 1/5 of your max bid limit(the amount you can bid on one or more items).
3. once deposit is verified, input the auction ID and the max amount of bid with their bidding system to bid on an item(like ebay).
4. if you win, they sent you invoice.
5. watch the status of your item(shipped out, received in US ext.) on your profile page under "my items".
6. pay the invoice, and after your item is labeled "received in U.S. office" which takes around a week or so after auction ends, request shipment to you under "request shipping" page.
7. they ship item to you and sent you the shipping fee invoice.

alternatively, if you're more comfortable with more simplistic step by step guide, I suggest m-world-service. contact them with email and they'll tell you step by step what you need to know in order to get those cels, you pay higher fee but with more user friendly service and help.

hope this helps :D

Get a passport
Go to Japan
Buy cels in Japan
Come back home.
The world is your oyster...