Week 28 Review - Ordering More Anime Merchandise

I recently ordered some nendoroids from Mandarake since I wanted to collect some figures (I never had any figures before other than some basic toy ones like Star Wars and Doraemon). I'm not gonna be a big spender on anime figures since I don't have that much space in my room, but I just wanted to collect some quirky and funny anime figures. I also bought some anime keychains from AliExpress and Tictail. 

Tictail was a site I stumbled upon and it looked like a marketplace for people who just wants to earn some money buy selling their handcrafted art products. I bought three keychains from Tictail (and it cost $4 each and that's including International Shipping). That is value indeed and from the pictures, the keychains looked decent quality (the original price for all 3 keychains together was $4ish altogether - VALUE!).

AliExpress was also a site I never ordered from before. I browsed and browsed and there were decent quality keychains on there. No offense but keychains have really low resell value unless they are some limited edition stuff. I bought a Korosensei plush pillow and some Re Zero keychains. Furthermore, it is free shipping - that's what I love about buying from China, and yes it will take 1 - 2 months to come to me, but I'm not that desperate. I'm a poor student and I rather save as much money and avoid the large shipping costs when it comes to buying from overseas. There were also some bootleg Nendoroids that I wanted to buy from there, but I felt that it would be a big "dog" to buy from there. The thought came to my mind because some of the Nendoroids that I wanted were out of stock and the available ones are heavily inflated (sometimes triple the original price), and I am definitely not paying that much for an anime figure - I'm too poor HAHHAHAA :') 

Tell me - what do you guys think? Do you think buying bootlegs is ok? I personally think it is ok for extremely high-priced figures (ones that cost over $70+), but I rather people buy the ones that are $50 wise, since you have (1) RESELL VALUE and (2) "Supporting" the company. Also, where do you guys get merchandise from? I tried looking at AmazonJP, but the shipping were crazy. For three keychains, the shipping was 2400 yen and the price of the keychains altogether was only 1800 ish yen. Absolutely crazy and that is why I bought keychains from AliExpress.