/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

Hi taobbies,
I have gone on a little adventure I want to tell you guys about.
A few threads ago an anon got laughed at for ordering things that you could get locally for cheaper and I was like "no way" and then an anon was like "yes way" and reminded me there was ebay and aliexpress. I had a look around and ordered a few things from both (aliexpress is taking a long time to ship. spooked.) and I'm starting to get a feel for what you can get cheaper from english language sites even though their prices are higher (because the shipping is low or free).
So I was all "haha taobao, I am not your slave anymore with your high shipping and your tempting stupid things" but then I remembered the really pretty things I wanted from taobao and lo and behold, there was no sign of those treasures anywhere else (except places like romwe which resell their junk for massive bux).
So, again, I think I'm starting to figure out what is cheaper on aliexpress/ebay and what's cheaper (or solely accesible) on taobao. The tricky thing about it is that taobao's not really cheap at all. With this in mind I've started thinking of taobao as a place to get really nice things for a reasonable price rather than really cheap things "omg look it's only 8 dollars" (because it's more like $15-$20 with shipping).
I just received some of those fake otk sock tights from ebay and they are lovely and even though they were $8 including shipping that's so much less of a dent in my budget than a taobao order would be at this time.
I am still planning on doing a nice big taobao order but it's nice to know that little orders can be done on other sites cheaply.
The reason I'm going on and on about this is partially to share with the newbies some of my acquired learnings and partially to thank you guys for being so helpful and teaching me how to shop. I love these threads so much <3