Cipher back orders

[Neghis]

Kinda fell off this game after series 9. Now after the cancellation announcement I'm looking to buy a lot of the cards I missed, however Amiami has closed new orders for older sets. 

Is this solely because of the current crisis or are a lot of these sets just impossible to order now?

What do you guys think? And any advice for ordering a large amount of sets in case orders open up again?

[FireFenrir]

Sad but yes, I think that the crisis is why there is no longer stock indeed. But there are alts -more expensive of course-, but the end of the game, who was announced more than a month ago now, don't helped. But there seems to be restock anyway from other websites (I think of Nin nin game for example who recently restocked set 18, but it's no longer available now!) So, maybe Amiami will be restocked when the pandemic will end, but we can't be sure about that sadly.

As fore advices, as long as no one knows if Amiami will be restocked, maybe you should try to buy them on other places if you're familiar with proxy service, that's more expensive but there's large stock on Amazon Japan or Rakuten japan too. 

[AllStarKnight]

I kept up with amiami's stock pretty frequently for quite a few months before the crisis (been keeping up since November, I believe), just to have an idea of what to expect.

Generally speaking, they would have at least two sets with orders open: the most recent set, and preorders for the next set. Orders would sometimes close for the most recent set but restocked quickly imo. So, a pretty consistent thing to see B18 + preorders for B19, and then later, B19 + preorders for B20.

The only other consistent pattern was that they'd often have the 2nd most recent set as well. To be fair, I never saw B17 in stock, so I can only confirm this pattern for the two sets I was fully around for. After B19 came out, B18 was stocked off-and-on for at least a month. Same for after B20 came out, where I wouldn't see B18 anymore but I would still see B19 stocked off-and-on. Of course, now neither B20 nor B19 are stocked (as well as no more starter decks, which they used to have usually 1-3 of), but that certainly has to do with the current crisis.

 

However, these were not the only boxes restocked. I surely didn't catch every restock (B16 went from out of stock > restocked > orders closed before I could even consider ordering), but I caught a lot. They were restocked randomly, in a random order (B04 > a recent set > B02, etc.), and kept orders open for very different amounts of time. But here are all the other sets I remember seeing for sure over those months: B02, B04, B05, B08, B14, B16

There's about 3 other sets I think were restocked at some point as well but I don't remember for sure anymore.

 

TLDR: Crisis is why there aren't old sets at all right now, and no set was ever 100% impossible to order from amiami eventually. However, it was very random and a waiting game for older sets even pre-crisis. Also, due to being available at different times, they would probably require multiple shipments.

Still potentially cheaper than buying elsewhere, but I'm not sure if things will even go back to pre-crisis with Cipher ending.

Edited May 24, 2020 by AllStarKnight