I actually overhauled the “Where can you buy Shinra Bansho cards?” guide about two…uhhh, maybe even three weeks ago, but was otherwise so busy I forg0t to mention it here. I also added info about Rakuten just today, now that I’ve more or less figured out how to navigate the thing.
“God Luo Various Forms” is my favorite machine translation for the title so far.
It wasn’t worth mentioning there, but for some reason Plamoya, who otherwise hasn’t been selling Shinra Bansho anything for a while, put up a Yama Ou Belferia card(s?) at an astonishingly hilarious price. Her average elsewhere seems to be 1,200 to 1,800 Yen. Why they suddenly have the one card and no others…hmmm…
In other news, I’ve bought and received copies of the Card Encyclopedia and Perfect Encyclopedia thanks to the generous help of a friend in Japan, so I might do overviews of each of those if I get the chance. Don’t be expecting legit scans or anything though, they’re for otaku dork collector purposes, so I don’t want to break the spine to do it proper or anything. I might do some ghetto shadow-where-the-page-bends scans of select pages though, in particular some very nice story art in the Card Encyclopedia featuring the likes of everyone’s favorite Smurf, Astaroth.
On Translations:
Eagle eyed nerdsreaders may have noted in previous post comments I’ve been looking into getting some card translations done. To be more specific, I’ve been talking to some friends, contacts and other leads about commissioning translations. So far, no luck due to various reasons. I’m still working on it, but at this point I might as well put it out there – if anyone else happens to have any suggestions or is a translator willing to negotiate some kind of reasonable rate, do let me know.
Shinra Bansho World 
Oh you lucky bastard. I want the books so much (I also want the cards but once I start getting money in I plan on ordering them). I assume there is not easy way to order them, without costing you an arm and a leg, is there?
Now onto translations:
Here’s a translator that I know is used by the Monster Girl Encyclopedia fandom, and at least from what I have seen he seems pretty reliable. His rates seem pretty decent so you shouldn’t have to pay much of the older ones (becuase aren’t all the older ones mainly just quotes? with maybe little bits of information sprinkled on the pages?).
Also, as far as money goes, when I get money in I’d be willing to help fund the translations but right now I don’t have much (and I also have to buy stuff for college).
It cost around 60 dollars (including shipping inside Japan + shipping to US). The vast bulk of that came from the Perfect Encyclopedia, being 3,000 yen new, and heavy. The Card Encyclopedia on the other hand is light, and was 155 yen (!!). Since my friend insisted on registered SAL, the international shipping came out to just shy of 20 dollars. So yeah, expensive, although roughly the cost of a new video game for two items isn’t all that bad compared to what some poor figure collectors have to endure.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll drop him a line – I actually didn’t think he was active anymore, but it never hurts to try.
Oh wow. That isn’t to bad for two books. Sometime I’ll have to look into getting my hands on them then.
And Brolen still appears to be active becuase he recently (a couple weeks ago) translated something for the MGU.
Also, when your browsing his (Brolen’s) blog you might want to be careful becuase it’s all NSFW.