New Year – Some great deals on vintage air!
New Year holidays often the holiday time for shopping in Japan. Family members hand out cash-given items to stores and stores make up for this extra money with special deals such as limited-edition, discounted items inside lucky bags.
Despite this usually happening in shops and large companies, it seems as though individuals can get in on the action with their own special-edition: air!
Quite a number on Mercari’s flea market app offering Air of 2022 stuck in plastic bags and bottles on News Day. Most sellers sold for tight $22,022 yen (US$15) but some ambitious buyers went up to 20,022 yen ($153).
Why are people doing this? with some expletives sprinkled in for good measure. Venting air isnt particularly a new thing. British giant put back bottled air up a few years ago and started selling canned Air of Heisei just before Naruhito became Emperor and the Japanese era officially changed from Heisei to now Reiwa.
Fresh 2019 news report about Air of Heisei. It was also a tourist event for the region Heinari, whose kanji characters are same as Heisei
Air of Heisei would seem to be where that came from. Regulars got in on action in 2019 by selling their own Air Of Heisei. Even since Heisei had already mastered, they had to find air from that era that was already trapped and typically in packaging materials like bubble wrap or packing air bags that had been produced before April of 2019.
Heisei Air can still be marketed on Mercari
As a result, many sellers began selling Air of 2020 on New Years and armed with the knowledge of prior could trap their own air to sell a more artisanal version than the slick-looking cans.
Brother of some 2020 air seller showing off the wares.
(@__sksz) Dec 31, 2020
Yes, 2020 wasnt a good year for air unless youre a pathologist, this may be why a lot of tweets for Air of 2021 were posted there the next year.
Oh crap! Im all out of air from 2022. Should have saved some air from 2022 when I had a chance. I wonder what happens when you blend air from 2022 with around 23. Oh yeah, I just realized I cant breathe air of 2022 anymore. I can still get some from my tires.! Plastic bag will leave it to lose its freshness. Get them freezed when weighing as many. But how can you be sure it was not all 2023 air until it arrives at your home and you open it?
On Mercari, it is possible to look up the history and ratings of the sellers, and when checking people selling Air of 2022 they seem to be all normal sellers of typical items like clothing, electronics or figures, and all the sellers I looked at had perfect 5-star customer satisfaction ratings. Perhaps selling Air of 2022 is simply their cute way of sending a New Years greeting to other Mercari users.
And if someone actually buys the air: Hey, all the better!
Here are only a handful of people selling air from year e-mail but might be seeing a quirky flea market app holiday tradition coming to an end. Keep your eyes on Air of 2023 next year and start selling some of your own.
Source: Mercari, Hachima Kiko Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!