Capsule toys are sold in Japan only, out of machines, and no manufacturer ships them abroad. The way one leaves the country is a proxy buyer: a Japanese company that buys the item from a shop or auction on your behalf and forwards it to your address. You find the set and give them its Japanese name; they do the rest.
The three steps
- 1
Copy the Japanese name
Find the set here and copy its name. Japanese shops and auctions list it under that name and no other; the English title of the series will not find it.
- 2
Paste it into a proxy buyer's search
Open FromJapan and paste the name in. The proxy searches Japanese shops and auction sites that do not themselves ship abroad.
- 3
Pick a listing and let the proxy buy it
FromJapan buys the item in Japan, receives it, and forwards it to your address. You pay the item price, the proxy's fee and international shipping.
Every release on this site opens a panel with its name ready to copy and this link beside it — the same three steps, with the typing done.
Open FromJapanAn affiliate link — gashagasha earns a commission on orders started there, and it costs you nothing extra. Nothing is sold on this site.
What a set costs
Across the 17,598 capsule sets in this archive the median price is ¥300, and eight in ten fall between ¥200 and ¥500. It has been drifting up: for sets released since 2024 the median is ¥400.
That is the price in the machine. The proxy’s fee and international shipping sit on top of it, and on a single ¥400 capsule they will come to several times the toy — which is the whole reason people put four or five sets in one parcel rather than ordering as they find them.
Why you have to search in Japanese
Every set is listed under the name its maker printed on the box, and that name is Japanese. “Attack on Titan” appears zero times in Japanese shop listings; 進撃の巨人 is what they all say. Search on this site takes English; a Japanese shop’s search does not.
One trap in the names themselves: a title that opens with 【箱売】 or 【ガシャポンオフィシャルショップ限定】 is saying where the set was sold, not what it is, and no shop listing repeats it — leaving it on the front of a search returns nothing. Brackets that are part of the title stay: 【推しの子】 is the name of the series. The copy button on each release has already made that distinction for you.
Sets that are no longer in the machines
A capsule set is in circulation for a matter of weeks. Everything older than that — which is nearly all of the archive, running back to 2000 — exists only on Japanese auction and resale sites, and those are exactly what a proxy buyer is for. It is also the one way to get a specific figure rather than whatever the machine gives you: you are buying a listing, and a seller can be offering the one you want.
Questions
- Can you buy gashapon outside Japan?
- Not directly. Capsule toys are sold from machines in Japan, and no manufacturer ships them abroad. A proxy buyer — a Japanese company that buys on your behalf and forwards the parcel — is the way one leaves the country.
- How much does a capsule toy cost?
- Most are between ¥200 and ¥500 in the machine. The proxy's fee and international shipping are on top of that, and for a single capsule they will cost more than the toy, which is why people order several at once.
- Can you choose which figure you get?
- Not from a machine — a capsule is random, and that is the point of the format. Buying through a proxy you are buying a listing rather than turning a handle, so a seller offering one specific figure of the set is a listing you can pick.
- Are older sets still available?
- Not in machines. A set is in the machines for a matter of weeks; after that it exists on Japanese auction and resale sites, which is where a proxy buyer looks. This archive lists what was released, back to 2000 — it is not a shop and nothing here is in stock.