Where can you buy Shinra Bansho cards?

Our own forum also now has a Card Market, where you can find/post more deals on cards, and buy/sell/trade with other members.

Consider:

Shinra Bansho Choco cards/wafers are different from the Carddass trading card game, which is long defunct. See our section on those, as well as the main chocolate card series, for the distinction. For further examples of what these are like, see the Overview of a Card Pack Box article.

New
-Buying new, complete card/wafer packs online is generally done by the box (20 count), rather than buying single packs.
-Boxes retail for 2,100 JPY, although sites often discount them to about 1,680 JPY.
-The amount of time a particular box is available can vary, depending on the retailer and the popularity of the characters available in that installment. As chocolate expires, however, you likely won’t find any much more than a year old. And if you do, don’t eat that chocolate.

Used
-Within the wafer/card carrying packs themselves, SBC cards come in a clear plastic wrap. Most do not remove the card from this, as it’s plenty visible within and makes for fine protection anyway. As such, collectors typically deem cards removed from the plastic wrap to be worthless. These open cards should be cheaper.

Search Terms
神羅万象 (Shinra Bansho) – 神羅万象チョコ (Shinra Bansho Choco) – Shinra Bansho – Shinra Banshou – Shinrabanshou – Shinrabansho

The following retailer information is based on what was available at the time of writing. Please refer to the actual retailer’s site for the most up to date details.

New

Card Boxes

AmiAmi.com – Search Shinra Bansho. Offer pre-orders on boxes when possible, the availability of which may fluctuate depending on their expected stock access. Tend to have boxes on the release date and are often able to keep them in stock for a few weeks after. Always sell boxes at a slight discount from the normal MSRP.

A popular stop with otaku hobby enthusiasts internationally thanks to their vast selection and range of shipping options, they are who I have personally used for boxes for a while now.

Hobby Search (1999.co.jp/eng) – Sporadically offer boxes by the time of release date, and seem to be able to keep them in stock a few weeks after.

Plamoya – Their prices on boxes are nearly double everyone else’s when they’re in stock, but sometimes they sell older boxes from the last year or two, handy for collecting from previous installments.

Rakuten Global Market – Search 神羅万象. Sort by price to find more boxes, and note the seller names (so you won’t feel silly for buying from AmiAmi through here). Second hand cards can also be found here (see Used section below).

eBay.com – Fairly recent new boxes and items like card albums and figures (likely used) are a more regular occurrence here, although prices are often questionable. AmiAmi has started offering boxes when they have extra stock here with required EMS shipping, which sometimes works out to slightly cheaper than ordering with EMS from their site, making it worth considering.

Amazon.com – As of late, Japanese marketplace sellers have made recent boxes available. With bloated base prices and shipping, however, they tend to go for a ludicrous amount (although this can vary, and may more or less be fair for the older, discontinued boxes).

Amazon.co.jp – Search for 神羅万象 or 神羅万象チョコ. Keep in mind that although you can click In English in the upper right to partially view the site as such and log in with an Amazon account from other regions, they’re unable to ship most items overseas. Potentially, however, they could be ordered and shipped with the help of a proxy service. Second hand cards are also available through marketplace sellers (see Used section below).

Other

Hobby Link Japan – Have not stocked any regular SBC boxes in a very long time, but currently have boxes of the Carddass Shinra Bansho Card Game Battle 2 booster series at bargain bin pricing. A well respected stop for hobbyists – I’ve bought other goods from them and can attest to their reliability.

Used

For all of the sites listed in this section, search for 神羅万象 (Shinra Bansho) or 神羅万象チョコ (Shinra Bansho Choco).

Rakuten Global Market – As it’s a marketplace site, the willingness of each particular seller to ship overseas will vary. See their Help and FAQ links in the upper right. They also have a recommended forwarding service, Tenso, although of course you could just as well use any other.

Amazon.co.jp – Similarly, all second hand cards here are sold through marketplace sellers as well, so a forwarding service will likely be necessary.

Amazon.com – Individual cards have started showing up, usually under search term “shinrabansho”. As of this writing, the marketplace sellers are Japanese, meaning default shipping is expensive on top of already high card prices, but it may be worth keeping an eye on.

Yahoo Auction Japan – The largest Japanese auction website. Most sellers will not deal with international orders at all – as such, there are numerous proxy services that specialize in assisting with bidding and shipping on Yahoo Auction Japan in particular (I cannot personally attest to the reliability of any one of these services, so you will have to investigate this on your own).

Mandarake English Site – So-called RULERS OF TIME, a famous chain of second hand good stores in Japan. Their English language site ships internationally. As what they have depends on whatever is available in their various stores, their stock is often in flux, and it’s possible something may have been bought in the actual store while you placed your order. But, they have options in place for cancelling/replacing orders should that happen.

Please note: Because they deal in all kinds of used media, including fan made derivative works with varying content, there is a warning when entering the site as to whether or not you wish to see X-rated content. If you don’t care and say Yes, searches for 神羅万象 will also display various adult doujinshi – if you’d rather not see such things and say No, you’ll only get official goods like cards (and possibly clean, all ages doujinshi).

For further advice

Check out our retailer feedback thread here in the forum – numerous other retailers and forwarding service experiences are detailed here. Feel free to contribute as well!

Our forum also now has a Card Market, where you can find/post more deals on cards, and buy/sell/trade with other members.