New and Improved Avane!

We recently undertook the huge task of completely moving and rebuilding www.avaneshop.com! In addition to a new look and a new system we have some great new features for new and returning customers.

1. Permanent Cart
Now when you log in all items stay in your cart indefinitely until you either purchase them or they're sold out. So you can log in,  add all your favorite finds and then come back to pick them up on pay day.

2. Points Program
We now have a points program, every item you buy earns you points to trade in for money off a future purchase. So now you get rewarded for buying the stuff you were going to buy anyway. Everyone who makes a purchase is eligible for points and you get 200 points just for signing up for a new account with us! Check out all the details of our points program here.

3. Address Book
Our new customer account system allows you to save multiple addresses now so you can have your items easily sent to your home, work, or friends whenever you want using the same account.

4. New Products Category
We now have a New Products category featuring only our newest store additions, to make it easier for regular customers to see our most latest items at a glance. Check it out here. Currently it's a bit full as we just launched our new site with over 600 items from our back catalog,  but we added over 20 items that haven't been on the store before just this week!

Those are just the largest and most significant changes we've made. There's a lot of things to explore on the new www.avaneshop.com! We've added new categories, changed our layouts and  made all sorts of little tweaks to make your shopping experience better. We did keep some things the same though, we still have tons of vintage toys, games anime and collectibles for sale. We moved over 600 items from our previous store and we're adding more regularly. We also recently added our popular Sailor Moon and Utena coloring pages (scanned from our collection of vintage coloring books) to the new build.

If that's not enough incentive to visit check out some of our newly added items:

New in Package Charizard Tomy Figure for sale

Neo Queen Serenity Keychain for sale

Sailor Moon Senshi in Swimsuits mug for sale

We've got a ton more items available and adding more on all the while so stop by and check it out.


Don't forget to stop by our shop:

Sales Time!

Here's a Sale, it never fails, it makes me wanna wag my tail when it comes I want to wail SAAALLEEE! (brought to you by the mail song from Blue's Clues)

So silly song aside, we really are having a sale, a few of them actually. First up is our manga sale.

 We've already reduced our manga and comic prices drastically and most are less than $3 a volume with many at $1. On top of these already low prices we're currently offering 30% off on all our manga with coupon Code: Mangasale
 
This code works on any Manga, Comics, or Books in are our aptly named Comics Manga and Books section. So go find yourself some awesome reading material!

Next leg of our sale is the Clearance section. You know how sometimes you pu something in your closet and forget about it until leg warmers aren't cool anymore? Well that's happened in our stock room so we've been marking down a lot of stuff  that's been sitting too long being unloved. Most of it's cooler than leg warmers have ever been too for example:

This super awesome promo poster for Kai Doh Maru. It's down from $5 to $2 and even if you've never seen it, it has gorgeous art!

Or there's this super adorable Magical Do Re Mi/ Ojamajo Doremi UFO Catcher of Momoko with a cookie, down to $5 from $9

Or if you're looking for something more vintage, there's this super cute Care Bears Warm Feelings board game. Down to $7 from $9

That's just a tiny sampling of our sale pages, so head on over to our clearance section and snag yourself a great deal before they're gone. For an even better deal you can combine clearance prices with the manga sale code, so go forth and shop cheaply!

Don't forget to stop by our shop:

August 2010 Coupon Code

We haven't had a coupon code in awhile and with everyone wanting to save money for the back to school season, it seems August is the perfect time for one. So for the rest of this month you can get 20% of anything in the store. Not Sure what you want? Here are some of our top picks:

Vintage Donkey Kong Mario trading card sized sticker from 1982. This sticker is 28 years old and has Mario's old drastically different character design. This was before Mario was even named Mario and was instead simply Jumpman. This is an awesome collectible for the vintage nintendo fan. We' suggest sticking it to your favorite notebook, but it's very vintage so we're honestly not sure how well it would stick. ;-_-  At $2.00 it was already not going to break the bank but with discount it's only $1.60, a tiny price for a collectible that's almost 30 years old.



Perhaps a littler more appropriate for back to School time a Sailor Moon Memo Pad:

This is an official Sailor Moon Japanese memo pad and even has to official Toei seal on the back. Each sheet has this same image of Usagi on it and lines on the back. The R season ran in Japan from 93 to 94 so it's 16 years old now, but still looks factory fresh. It's very cute for use (there's a large number of sheets 30+ approx., unlike most shaped memo pads)  or great as a collection piece given it's age and fantastic condition. It's normally $7.50, but with discount would only be $6!







If you're college bound you're likely to moving into your own place be it a dorm, or an apartment and one of the things you're going to need is your own dishes. So for you pokemon fans we have this rare glass bowl.

This is a rare Japanese item featuring Manaphy from Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. Bowl is heavy glass and features different cute images of Manaphy. It holds approximately 1 cup, so it's a little too small for ramen, but would be perfect for cereal or snacks. Because it's rare it's normally $28 but with discount it would only be $22.40.



Everyone knows that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (or Jack Nicholson a crazy murderer, but it's not Halloween time yet so let's skip that for now) So why not take a little respite from text book reading with some book selections of your own?

Vampire Hunter D, the first in a series of novels about the mysterious sexy half vampire (Dhampir) who simply goes by D. This is the perfect distraction, it's got a little something for everyone, part sci fi, part fantasy, part drama and a wee bit of romance. Not to mention everyone's favorite fantasy is a sexy vampire these days, and the D novels offer you a more guilt free means of enjoying the genre with no sparkling and a lot less teenage angst than some other choices. This is usually only $1, but it's even cheaper at $0.80 with discount.






If you think maybe you've done too much reading already there's always artbooks:

Kaori Yuki, is most famous for her manga turned anime Angel Sanctuary and we've got two official Japanese print artbooks on hand from it right now. Lost Angel (seen at left) and Angel Cage. These are full of some of the most beautiful manga style illustrations you'll ever see. We really weren't big fans of Angel Sanctuary, but you don't need to be to enjoy this gorgeous artwork. If you like manga style art or fantasy art at all, these gorgeous books are worth owning. The scans are actually pretty readily available online for these, but they are nothing compared to the high quality image printings contained in the books. Lost Angel is in excellent condition and even comes with it's OBI. Normally a very reasonable $15, only $12 with discount.
Still not convinced you want to buy an artbook for any anime/manga you didn't like or are unfamiliar with? Here's a sample image:

And that's just a handful of the almost 100 items we've added just this month with more being added on pretty much a daily basis. Check out our full catalog to see much much more. And as always we can sometimes accommodate special requests we currently have 100's of items waiting to go on to the site, so feel free to ask, we might have what you're looking for.

Naturally by this time you just want to shop and use your code. So it's: August1020 simply enter that at checkout and you'll get 20% off everything in your cart prior to shipping, It's only good until September 1st so use it quickly!

~Stephanie

Hmm..just a blog

My title is a reference to Metal gear solid on the PS1. Kudos to you if you recognize what phrase/portion I'm parodying.

I thought it was high time I made just a general blog as I haven't done one of those in a long time. I've mostly been posting  reviews lately and didn't even do one for this week.

Here in the land of Avane, there's a lot of stuff going on right now, most of it not so fun and geeky.  Jennifer is graduating with her accounting degree in May, we're planning a vacation shortly after, we're both working normally and are doing a temp night job for extra cash. So needless to say we've got our hands full we real life action and adventure.

Not helping the stresses of real life adventures situation are the massive changes our store host went through at the end of last month. I still haven't recovered from all the "improvements" so my listing output has been greatly diminished. (On that note I do NOT recommend Highwire Commerce as a provider) Though not to worry store fans, I'm learning to work with the new framework and have updated over 50 items in the last month with more to add soon. :)  If you're a fan of our store go take a look, we've been going through our collections pretty heavy handedly lately. Our toy room/geek room is reaching critical mass and we need clear some of this stuff out soon before our house explodes sending books, video games, dolls and action figures flying. So you might find something fun. If you're looking for something specific be sure to use to talents of Cornelius, our search octopus, he's conveniently located at the top of every page.


In the face of adversity, adversity of course being responsible adulthood, our geeky spirits endure! To keep our geek cred up we've still been working in some time for gaming I've been spending my nights playing Mario 64 DS when I should be sleeping (I'm up to 112 stars, woot!) and  my days, work/life schedule permiting, working my way through Castlevania:Symphony of the Night for the Nth time. Meanwhile Jen's been  finding flags in Assassins Creed in between work and homework. I've also been working in some old episodes of Tom Baker era Dr Who while I work, because as everyone knows vintage ScFi increases productivity. If that geekery weren't enough to keep us on the top of our game,we had planned on attending the geek prom once again this year, but found it was canceled. Luckily the following weekend we're headed to the Video Games Live concert. So all in all I think we're managing to stay true to the geek life, it's kind of like a thug life only much safer and involving more math and electronics.

So to bring it all together we're still around, we're still geeky and we still want you to buy our geeky stuff so we can buy other geeky stuff and talk about it. We're just busy right now. Though we're trying our hand at social networking so you can always try to connect with us via Facebook and Twitter. We're currently addicted to Gaia Online's Ocean party game so we're over there at least once a day. Come say hi if you're so inclined.

 ~Stephanie

Februrary Coupon Code, 20% off!

So I know it's awfully late in February to have a coupon code, but between making a last minute trip to Washington DC earlier in the month (and almost being stuck there because the record snowfall!), family obligations, a cold and unhealthy addiction to Olympic coverage, I'm behind.

However, I haven't been completely useless I have added some new goodies to the shop in the past couple days and am offering a substantial 20% off coupon just put in Feb20 at checkout.

Not sure what you want to get cheap? I suggest the following recent additions:


Mario Kart figure! Jen and I have been ridiculously addicted to Mario Kart Wii as of late, so we could just have mario kart on the brain, but we think this little mario is one of the coolest small figures we currently have available. And at just $3.50 before the 20% discount is applied, he's quite affordable for any collector. As a bonus he rolls pretty well so you can use this to play with your cat (or dog) in geeky style. Not that we'd uh...know from personal experience with ours or anything...cough.




So maybe you're not much of a figure collector. Maybe you'd like something a bit more festive. We just passed Valentines day and maybe your true love didn't get you what you really wanted so you want to splurge on something you actually like. Or maybe you just want to buy yourself some awesome geeky jewelry and don't need anyone else doing anything for you. For you fierce independent people we have an awesome Sailor Moon Enamel Necklace!

This is a hard to find officially released necklace and unlike Some of the items that were only released in north America, it's actually pretty cool. In fact it's so cool they didn't even need to get the color of her boots correct! It's a large and high quality pendant with a brightly colored cute enamel image of Usagi and Luna. I've seen a lot of previously unseen sailor moon Jewlery on eBay lately, but this piece is larger than what I'm seeing offered there and I think was produced in smaller number as we've only seen a handful of necklaces in this style. This is really a perfect piece for a sailor moon fan and as sure to get noticed at cons and other geeky gatherings. She's just $13.60 with the coupon code.


And if neither of those things interests you there's always some one of kind production cel art from Street fighter! We've got loads of street fighter cels right now, because last month we bought a big lot and after adding some choice pieces to our personal cel collection we've got several nice shots left over we'd like to send home to new collectors.



I'm probably completely biased because I am an unabashed Vega fangirl, but I think this is easily one of the best street fighter pieces we have for sale. If I didn't already have one just like it in my collection there's no way it'd be available and in fact if this one stays unsold for too long, I'm probably going to keep him for myself like a greedy dragon perched atop my treasure horde. $25 is a small price to pay for a piece of everyone's favorite matador and with the current coupon he's only $20 so grab him for your collection before month's end and I change my greedy little mind.


If for some reason you don't like any of that cool stuff there's lots more to check out we've got over 200 items in stock right now and I'll be adding more throughout the week (mostly vintage toys and costume patterns) Assuming of course I can tear myself away from Olympic coverage...


~Stephanie

Cyber Monday Discount in Our Shop

So I know that I said I'd avoid all sales related stuff during the remainder of Nablowrimo, but it's Cyber Monday so I can't avoid it, sorry for all the shameless self promotion NaBlo people!

I'm offering a special discount (as I worked into my last post) So if you go shopping in my store
today you'll get $5 OFF any order over $20! We've got several fun items under $5 so it's like getting a free item!

Just use specail code: Cyber to get your discount, it's only good for today though, so don't miss it!

We've added some rare new items in perfect gift/collector condition as well so there's lots of new stuff perfect for spending your discount on!

First up if you're a sailor moon fan (or just shopping for one) there's the hard to find Sailor Pluto Beauty Change Doll:

Beautiful doll straight from our private collection in great collector or gift giving condition! We've got lots of other dolls too, so check out the dolls section for others if pluto's not your cup of tea.

Next for your favorite anime and game fan there's this beautiful cel of Chun-Li from the Street Fighter Alpha/Zero animated film:


This is an absolutely gorgeous hand painted cel. It was actually used in the production of the film! You can own the same frame you see on screen! We've got several one of a kind production cels and sketches available so if you're looking for a unique gift idea and aren't much of a street fighter fan check out our art section.

For the vintage video game fan on your list there's this awesome Mario and Zelda combination Lunch Box:

I use a box like this to get all our postal receipts in. :) I also used one as a purse at geek prom and got a ton of postive comments about it. It would make a really fun gift for a retro gamer and it's currently on sale for $25 so if you buy it today it's only $20! We've got loads of old and new video game memorabilia so if a lunch box isn't your cup of tea you're sure to find something else you'll like.

For your favorite Sci-Fi fan we've got a huge collection of 40 Star Wars miniatures:

These are new and sealed and make a perfect Starwars tabletop RPG starter set as it comes with the books and maps. It's only $25 or $20 ($0.50 cents a figure!) if you buy it today with coupon! Though even if you're not a RPG palyer they make excellent display pieces, we'd know as that's what we do with ours. :)

If none of that stuff tickles your fancy be sure to come take look anyway, we've got 100's of fun items available and some smaller items that would make excellent geeky stocking stuffers that would end up being free today with the purchase of a larger item with coupon!

If you don't see anything you like, but know someone else who might like something please pass the word on to them. We'd like to see as many people as possible benefit from the today's coupon!

~Stephanie

NaBloWriMo day 13 Shopping and Sales!

So I know I said when I started this I wanted to adhere to the NaBlo community guidelines as closely as possible and not talk about any sales related stuff for the month. However, I've been doing a lot of work lately and can't help but talk about it. I hope if I just leave out any links and things an hope that means I'm still good, I'm not trying to be an ad, I'm just feeling pleased with myself.

First I integrated Paypal checkout. A relatively easy to implement and simple change, but two people used it immediately on the day I put the code in so it must be a good thing. I know that it saves typing time because otherwise my site's shopping cart asks for your payment info and then you have to put it in again if you use paypal so I know I'd appreciate it.

Second, I just signed up for a Twitter account today and integrated it in the store. So now my items should automatically "tweet" as soon as I upload them. I'm really awful at social networking, I deleted my myspace about a year ago and only update my facebook every couple months, if that's any indication. So I don't know that I'll ever end up tweeting about anything directly. My social ineptitude aside, hopefully it will be useful for the regular customers we have who want to know about our updates (as I also suck at putting together mailing list mailings). I still haven't figured out how to add the "tweet this" button on things, but I'm sure I'll learn eventually.

Third I got caught up on all my shipping. The only things I have left to send out now are recent things. I'm very happy about that. I always feel like a big jerk when I get behind on getting stuff out.Hopefully the craziness of life that's been plaguing us lately will die down a bit. As it gets closer to the Christmas shopping season the last thing I want is people thinking I'm the world's slowest shipper (though honestly I totally can be a times).

Lastly our cel sales have been going well, though it's a bit sad to part with some of the things we've had for years. But sometimes you know you just need to move on. Tastes and priorities change besides we could really use more cash right now. Not that we're quitting collecting, in fact I've got snazzy new stuff to update as soon as the selling period is done, some of it purchased with cash garnered from sales (cash we meant to save -_-;;), it's the great circle of collecting life. :)

I admit this is a boring entry, but that's all I've got for today. I've been working a lot and that's what my mind has been on and fore once I actually feel pretty accomplished.

I'll try to get a collection oddities post ready for tomorrow. It should hopefully prove to be a lot more interesting than minor site tweaks that are only really interesting to me.;)

~Stephanie

Store Updates and July's Coupon code

New coupon code! I apologize for it taking me until mid-month to get this up, but due to some internet outages and other things it was a hard month. To make up for the delay, this coupon code will get you a HUGE 25% off any order over $15 :) It's JulyBlog be sure to make good use of it. It shouldn't be too hard as I've been updating lots of things lately.

This months updates are primarily consisting of Video game collectibles.

Including a very rare Promo only Dead or Alive Extreme Gashapon of Kasumi in a special XBOX costume. it was only available to those who pre-orded the game and is very rare these days.


Also of note is a set of 3 Ace combat 5 Promotional patches. These were also only given away when you preordered the game and would not only be grat for a collector, but would be amazing on a flight jacket if you're a fan of the series.

Those are just two highlights, in addition to these and the other video game collectibles we've also managed to get some new manga, DVDs and some sailor moon stuff up so far this month, so go take a peek. We also have a bunch more goodies slated to go up soon as well so keep an eye out for something to use that coupon on!

~Stephanie

Basara Manga and Anime Mini Review & Store Updates

We're doing bunches of store updates now in an effort to reclaim some of our long lost shelf/floor/closet space. We're starting with our manga collection though it's proving a bit difficult to part with too many, is there some sort of 12 step program for manga addicts? Actually book buyers in general I can never pass up a decently priced interesting looking book of any sort and now they're kind of eating the house. But, I'm getting pretty off topic here.

Anyway, the largest manga collection in our shop wasn't even something we had to decide to part with, it's doubles from buying a lot to complete our collection. *sigh* But, it's well worth reading and well worth featuring: 12 volumes of Basara in English.


If you haven't heard of Basara, I would liken it one of my personal favorite manga/anime, CLAMP's masterpiece, X. Beautiful, bloody and emotionally complex. At first there seems to be a clear wrong and right, but as you progress you can see that everything is bathed in grey, both sides have valid points and arguments and are fighting for what they truly believe in. There's much more of an emphasis an the romance aspects than you see in X, but even for someone like me who often feels romance ruins an otherwise great manga, it's well written and really helps develop the characters. Basara is shoujo fantasy epic that supposed to be set in a distant future post apocolyptic Japan but looks much more like a medieval inspired fantasy kingdom. It follows the story of a young girl named Sarasa. Sarasa's twin brother, Tatara, was predicted to be the "child of light" who would lead the people to revolution and freedom. However, the hated and feared tyrant of their land , the Red King, sees to the end of Tatara's prophecy. Before anyone realizes what happens to Tatara, Sarasa decided to take up the revolutionary fight, calls herself Tatara and vows to fufil the prophecy on her own without anyone knowing the truth. Sarasa is not your typical crying helpless herione who thinks about nothing more than shopping and her next date. She has the fate of her land and her people on her shoulders and doesn't even get a magic wand. It's a far cry from the magical girls and high school drama one usually associates with the Shoujo genre. Though like you would expect with a Shoujo, there is romance and most of the story is told in, feelings, emotions and chance encounters rather than epic battles.
The entire Manga series runs 27 volumes, but these 12 are good place to start. :)

There's an anime as well, titled as Legend of Basara, it runs 13 episodes and covers the first 5 manga. It's a pretty true telling compared with the manga and well worth tracking down, we watched the entire thing in one sitting, it was THAT complelling. Sadly, it hasn't been released outside of japan, but fasubs are pretty readily available (We've got it on fansubed VHS , we're old like that). My only complaints about the anime are :
1) The art is pretty inconsistent, a third of the time it's beautiful, a third of the time it's terrible, and the rest of the time it's pretty "meh".
And 2) It also end very early on and with a cliffhanger. So I highly suggest at least having some of the manga on hand if you plan to watch the anime first or you will find yourself wandering online bookstores when you finishit late at night hoping to find it ASAP. I speak from personal experience on this one. ;)

Lots of other manga are headed into the store in the next few days as well so look for large portions/complete sets from: Judas, oh/ah my goddess, a slew of sailor moon comics and lots of single volumes other great titles.
A few other fun things that aren't so manga shaped will probably make their way in too , like this cute mint on card Sailor Neptune Figure.


So go shopping! and don't forget to use may's coupon code: MayBlog for a nice discount!

~Stephanie