cutiebunny wrote:The majority of items that Mandarake sells do not have a certificate of authenticity. I'd say close to 95% of all items (including cels, sketches, toys, original artwork) do not come with this certificate. If anything, the certificate is more of a guarantee that the item is worth the initial starting price, and not what you ended up paying for it. Most of the time, these certificates are generally reserved for the BWA items, and not the Everyday auctions or Dollar bin items you can find at their stores.
Actually, Mandarake issues certificate of authenticity only for cels and genga art and they have guidelines as per issuing them. A) if the item's original listing price starts at 10000 yen or above B) When the exhibitor requests it (whatever that means....but I'm sure they need to prove its authenticity to Mandarake for them to issue one)
A lot of BWA items start higher than 10000 yen, so hence the higher number of items with certificates. They issue them for Everyday Auctions too as long as its original listing price is 10000 yen or higher, or if the exhibitor requests it.
All this info is available on this page.
http://www.mandarake.co.jp/auction/faq_ja/warranty.html
cutiebunny wrote:The reason why many collectors will pay several times the amount that the same item would sell for on YJ is that they put it in writing that they do not sell fakes.
That's not what Mandarake says in the Japanese version of the website tho. I've never read the English site's text so I didn't realize they wrote "There is no risk of fake items." Here's what they say on the JP site, "Concerning the Auctions, Mandarake turns down obvious fakes, but Mandarake takes absolutely no responsibility with items without a Certificate of Authenticity, so please bid on your own accord."
このオークション大会に出展の商品に関しては明らかに贋作はお断りしていますが、保証書のない品に関しては、まんだらけは一切責任を負いませんので皆様の責任においてご入札ください。
If they had 2 auctions, one for the Japanese market and one for the international market with completely separate items, this would make sense for the contradicting warranty but since there's only one auction for all the markets, the English warranty is probably just a poor translation of the original Japanese. They're a Japanese company so I'm going with the warrantee explaination written in their native language. I'm not saying Mandarake sells fakes - just that I wouldn't put my faith in Mandarake 100% as per authenticity (even if they say "no risk of fakes" in the Eng text), as no appraiser is perfect - to Mandarake's own admission.
Thoughts? 
