Card Shops In Japan: Coletre

Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.

The first store that Ryan and I went to when we met up in Tokyo was Coletre in Ikebukuro.  This store is located east of Ikebukuro Station on the fourth floor of a building that has a restaurant called Yakitori Akiyoshi.

There's a small sign on the door identifying the shop:

The owner of the store had to take a bathroom break just as Ryan and I got there so there's a note on the door in the photo saying he'd be back in a minute.

Coletre was the first store I visited this trip that I had also visited back in 2013.  It also was the first store I visited this trip that was not a "mall store" so I expected to be able to find a lot more things from my want list.  And it did not disappoint.

The store has a wide variety of singles, going back to the early 1990's.  They also have a lot of complete base sets in stock as well as opened box sets.

I picked up a couple of the 1994 BBM singles I needed, most of the 2017 "secret versions" I needed and a couple Epoch NowOne cards.  I also picked up the brand new BBM Giants set here, pretty much just as the owner had finished putting it together.  I'm pretty sure I bought some more stuff here but I'm not sure what.  All told I spent 11000 yen here.  I can verify that the store takes credit cards because I used one on this purchase.

I came back to the store almost 2 weeks later and bought a couple other 1990's era BBM singles I was looking for.  I spent another 500 yen in the second visit.

I like this store a lot.  They carry a lot of stuff and they're a pretty good store if you're trying to build an older set.  I really only have one complaint about it - it's very cluttered and difficult to move around in.  It's not a terribly large store to begin with and there were a bunch of boxes on the floor that you'd have to move around to get to the card boxes.  Ryan said that the owner told him that he'd been at a card show the day before our visit and that's why the boxes were all over the place but the boxes were still there when I came back 12 days later.

Here's some photos of the store - you can see the boxes I'm talking about:

That's Ryan's arm on the left side of the second photo.

Just for comparison, here's a couple photos from my 2013 visit.  The store had only been open for a few months at that time:

The shelves in the second 2013 photo are the ones in the left-center part of the first 2019 photo.  The table full of cards in the third 2013 photo is the table on the right side of the first 2019 photo.

Here's a map showing the location of the store - well, really it's directions to Yakitori Akiyoshi.  Ryan says he always gets to the store by taking the East Exit from Ikebukuro Station and walking along Meiji-Dori until he reaches the MOS Burger at the corner of Meiji-Dori and the street the store is on.