A Fitful Night's Sleep

I had a really hard time falling asleep that night. I knew that a bid was entered on my behalf. And it was a pretty reasonable bid, too. Spending months obsessing over Japanese RVs made me realize that if I wanted to ever own one, I'd have to commit to some serious $$$. 

Well, not that serious in the grand scheme of things. But I couldn't keep lowballing. I'd never win an auction and my auction broker would probably disown me at some point.

But how did I arrive here?

I think it was just good timing, and location, location, location.

Sapporo is the capital of Hokkaido prefecture in Japan. Said prefecture encompasses the entire island of Hokkaido which is Japan's northernmost major island. I've never been there, but my wife and I have been to the island of Honshu twice. Honshu contains the brunt of Japan's better known cities and regions, to my understanding. While we might have some understanding of what Honshu is like, Hokkaido is still quite foreign to us. I would like to check it out some time.

Why bring up Sapporo?

The USS Sapporo, which sounds like some sort of battleship, is actually a giant car auction house located in the city of Sapporo. It's part of the larger Used Car System Solutions auction network. There are apparently 18 other USS auction houses within Japan. From my limited knowledge of Japanese auto auctions, these USS auction houses tend to have the most inventory and turnover compared to other auction houses in Japan.

...all those cars

All that said, USS Sapporo was the auction house where our potential future RV was located.

USS Sapporo is a bit of an interesting location for the fact that it's way up in Hokkaido. Less population means less cars, right? So I think this means that the inventory is a bit smaller. It also means that less people are interested in vehicles that come through.

Why? The key reason is because USS Sapporo does not have a major port from which ocean-going, car-carrying ships tend to dock. If you buy something from USS Sapporo and you want to send it to another country, such as the USA, you'll have to get it transported down to Yokohama (maybe there are other options as well) so it can be loaded on a ship. If one can just get a similar vehicle from a more centrally located auction house in, say, Yokohama, it reduces the distance to port that the vehicle must travel.

With this caveat in mind, it's to be expected then that prices at USS Sapporo be slightly lower than other more centrally located auction houses.

You'd think that with the aforementioned information I'd have obviously selected USS Sapporo for the very reason of getting a lower price but you'd be wrong. I wasn't really cognizant of this fact when I asked to place a bid.

Granted, my auction broker explained this all to me when I inquired about the vehicle.

Did I really take it into consideration? No, because I was blinded by the allure of a small Japanese RV.

So did I heedlessly place a bid and hope for the best? Not before asking for an inspection and copious photos! More on that process next time!