Nendoroid at 20: the parts-only (特典のみ) market is how Japanese collectors finish a figure for

Nendoroid turned twenty this February (first release February 2006, numbering now past #3100), and the anniversary pushed me to finally sort out a shelf of half-complete figures. In doing that I found a corner of the Japanese second-hand market that I had never seen discussed in English: listings that are not a Nendoroid at all, just the bonus part. Posting what I learned, with the exact listings I read this morning (17 September, Japanese marketplace via a forwarder) so the numbers are real rather than remembered.

The word: 特典のみ

特典 (tokuten) is the pre-order bonus - the extra face plate, the mini food, the special stand - that a specific Japanese retailer or the Good Smile shop attaches to a Nendoroid. のみ means "only". Put together, 特典のみ is a listing where the seller kept the figure and is selling just the bonus. Every such listing I read says the same thing in the description, in almost the same words: ねんどろいど本体は付属しません, "the Nendoroid body itself is not included". Read that line before you buy, in both directions - it is a trap if you thought you were getting the figure, and exactly what you want if you already own it.

What the parts cost right now

- Kaede (Nijisanji) - bonus display base only, no bag, seller rates it "damage or stain": 800 yen ($5.52)
- Kirby - the Good Smile official-shop bonus Maxim Tomato, sealed, body not included: 1,500 yen ($10.35)
- Yuta Okkotsu (Jujutsu Kaisen 0 Ver.) - the serious-face plate, sealed, bonus only: 1,999 yen ($13.79)
- Yoshikage Kira (JoJo) - the bonus cat-grass (猫草) part, sealed, figure not included: 3,000 yen ($20.70)

So the rarest piece of a figure you already own is a 800-3,000 yen problem instead of a rebuy-the-whole-thing problem. That is the entire point of this post.

And the sealed back catalogue, for scale

Same morning, same marketplace, all described as unopened:

- Draken #1813 (Tokyo Revengers), sealed: 2,100 yen ($14.49)
- Mikudayo #299, unopened, box wear noted: 2,860 yen ($19.73)
- Rengoku #1541 (Demon Slayer), sealed: 3,999 yen ($27.59)
- Denji #1560 (Chainsaw Man), unopened, still in the Amazon packaging so the box may be slightly warped: 4,200 yen ($28.98)
- Hatsune Miku RQ Ver. #75 - the 2009 Good Smile Racing personal-sponsor bonus, the early version with the white car: 4,200 yen ($28.98)
- Meta Knight #669, the re-re-release packaging, unopened: 5,170 yen ($35.67)
- Seto Kaiba (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters), unopened: 5,500 yen ($37.95)
- Kurisu Makise & Mayuri Shiina #197, Cheering Ver., the two-figure set: 10,000 yen ($69.00)

Against Good Smile's own current list prices of roughly 7,300-8,900 yen for a new numbered Nendoroid, most of the sealed few-years-old stuff sits at about half. The two outliers are instructive: the Miku RQ is a sponsor bonus that never had a retail price, and #197 is from the first two hundred numbers and simply is not stocked anywhere. Those are the ones where "wait for a re-release" is the only alternative to paying.

Why the international store cannot do this for you

Good Smile does ship abroad, and for current pre-orders that is the easy route. But by their own user guide, pre-orders are charged shipping per item type, so four pre-orders across four months can be four shipping charges; and structurally the store cannot sell kuji-prize Nendoroids, event/pop-up exclusives, retailer bonus parts, or anything out of print. The parts-only market exists only domestically, because it is collectors selling to collectors.

Searching

Search in hiragana: ねんどろいど, not "Nendoroid" - English-titled listings are the ones already priced for export. Add 特典のみ for parts, or the figure's number for a specific release (the number is the only unambiguous identifier once a character has a 2.0, a school-uniform ver. and a kuji variant). Condition words that matter: 新品未開封 sealed, 開封済み opened, 箱なし no box, 欠品 missing parts - that last one is the killer on a figure that is basically a bag of small parts.

If you are buying several, use a forwarder that holds and consolidates - Nendoroid boxes are small and light, so the fifth figure in a parcel costs almost nothing to ship while the first carries all the postage. The Mercari-side service fee on the one I use is a flat 300 yen per item, which is why a 800 yen stand is still worth buying through it.

The longer write-up with the anniversary programme (Nendoroid Day, the Japan tour, the fan-voted Rerelease Summit), the store-vs-store comparison table and the fee breakdown: Nendoroid (2026): the 20th anniversary, Japan-only kuji prizes and bonus parts, and the cheapest way to buy from Japan

And the live search I used for the parts listings above: ねんどろいど 特典のみ listings on the Japanese marketplace right now - usual disclosure, it goes through the forwarding service I buy with; treat it as a price reference.

Question for the room: does anyone keep a list of which retailer got which bonus face for a given number? I can find the parts, but working out whether the "serious face" I want was the AmiAmi bonus or the Good Smile shop bonus is still trial and error.

Suruga-ya is not empty, you are searching it in English: four measured comparisons (2026)

Every time Suruga-ya (駿河屋) comes up in a merch thread, someone reports back that they looked and it was mostly empty. It is not empty. The catalogue is indexed by Japanese product titles, and the English word you typed is not one of them. I ran the same four searches both ways this morning (2026-08-19) so the gap is a number instead of an opinion.

The same store, two languages, measured today

"Demon Slayer figure" — 0 results (the search URL 404s outright). 鬼滅の刃 フィギュア — 3,060.
"Nendoroid" — 3 results. ねんどろいど — 7,267.
"Sailor Moon" — 195 results. セーラームーン — 11,451.
"Evangelion" — 1,395 results. エヴァンゲリオン — 13,673.

Evangelion is the interesting one: 1,395 hits in English looks like a real catalogue, so you would never guess you are seeing a tenth of it. The English hits you do get are mostly items whose official title is written in romaji on the box. Everything else — the trading figures, the prize figures, the doujinshi, the out-of-print scale figures people actually want — is filed under kana and kanji.

There is no English mode to switch to

I checked before writing this: suruga-ya.jp has no language toggle on the front page, and /en is a 404. Whatever browser translation you run, the search box is still matching Japanese strings, which is why translating the page does not fix the result count. Get the Japanese title first, then paste it in. Three reliable sources for the title: the Japanese Wikipedia article for the series, MyFigureCollection's item page (it lists the JP name alongside the English one), and the manufacturer's own product page — Good Smile, Kotobukiya and Bandai all keep Japanese product pages up long after a figure is discontinued.

Read the two words in front of the title

Suruga-ya prefixes listings with 中古 (used) or 新品 (new), and on a search page for a popular line you will see far more 中古 than 新品 — that is the whole reason the prices are what they are. Used listings for the same figure are frequently a fraction of the new price, and the difference is usually box condition, not the figure. If a listing is cheap and you cannot tell why, the answer is normally in the Japanese condition line, not in the photo.

Then the boring part

Checkout is built for a Japanese address and Japanese payment, so overseas buyers generally go through a proxy or forwarding service that buys inside Japan and reships. Whoever you use, two habits matter more than which one you pick: search in Japanese (see above), and let purchases pool into one parcel instead of shipping each figure as it arrives, because international shipping is charged on volumetric weight and a single boxed figure is the worst value in this hobby.

On fees, so nobody has to guess: through OneMall, Mercari is a flat 300 yen per order, Yahoo! Auctions is 3% of the winning bid with a 200 yen minimum and 300 yen cap, and any other Japanese shop — Suruga-ya included — is 5% with a 200 yen minimum and a 1,000 yen cap. For comparison, Buyee is 500 yen per order, ZenMarket 500 yen per item, Neokyo 350 yen per item. International shipping is separate from all of those, everywhere.

The long English write-up of how ordering from Suruga-ya from abroad actually works is here: How to buy from Suruga-ya from abroad (2026). And if you want to see the Japanese-keyword effect for yourself without setting anything up, this is the same ねんどろいど search from the numbers above: ねんどろいど listings. Second-hand stock turns over daily, so hit counts and prices are today's, not permanent.