K-pop Collecting Glossary

BST COMMUNITY

• BST means Buy, Sell, Trade.
• This acronym regroups the whole community that buys, trades or sells items – usually photocards – online and sometimes offline during some events.

WTS / WTT

• WTS means Want To Sell.
• WTT means Want To Trade.
• These acronyms indicates what the person who made the post is looking for.
• Sometimes they only want to sell the items, sometimes they only want to trade them, and sometimes both options are possible.

PC

• PC means PhotoCard.
• This acronym is the easiest way to talk about photocards, those tiny pieces of cardboards with K-Pop idols on it that make us so happy. The term PC is often used for the photocards you find in regular albums.
• In South Korea, people often refer to photocards as “poca”

POB

• POB means Pre-Order Benefit.
• This acronym usually refers to a special kind of photocards that you can’t get in regular albums. They are usually offered as a bonus by a specific store when you buy an album during a specific time window.
• There can be other types of pre-order benefits, such as printed polaroids, postcards or even sometimes keyrings.
• Today, the term POB is used for almost every photocard that doesn’t come in regular albums, even if it doesn’t include any pre-order event.
• When you join a GO, you can sometimes choose the POB ONLY option, which means you will receive the POB, but nothing else from the album.

GO

• GO means Group Order.
• A GO is a process in which a person – the GOM or group order manager – orders some albums for multiple people so they can maximize their chances of receiving the photocard they want and minimize shipping fees.
• If you want to know more about GOs, you can check this guide.

KADDY / PROXY

• KADDY means Korean ADDress and PROXY means PROXY address. Both terms usually refer to the same concept.
• Usually, GOMs have a Kaddy or a proxy. They are businesses that help GOMs repack albums and photocards to make sure the shipping fees stay low and the items arrive in good condition.
• Kaddy and proxy have handling and/or consolidating fees that your GOM will calculate for each person who joined their GO depending on the type and quantity of claimed items and they will add those to one of the next payment.

EMS

• EMS means Express Mail Service and is a south-korean postal service.
• The term EMS is used to designate a fee that covers the shipping of your items from South Korea to the country your GOM is located in.
• It is usually the second payment of a GO.
• The EMS can vary a lot according to the size and the weight of your items: photocards are usually lower than 1CHF while bigger and heavier items can go up +30CHF or more.

CUSTOMS

• CUSTOMS is the name given to the fees that cover the importation fees of your items from South Korea to your GOM’s country.
• It is usually the third payment of a GO.
• CUSTOMS fees are calculated according to the value of your items, and in some countries according to the number of items imported.
• Sometimes, there are no CUSTOMS fees because the items in the package have a low value.
• The way CUSTOMS fees are calculated is specific to the country the package is destined to.

ALBUMS

• There are many types of albums and as many sizes, formats and ways to get your favorite’s artist music.
• The most common albums types are:
  • • Photobook: an album that contains a photobook. Usually, GOM do not receive the full albums of that format because shipping from South Korea is super expensive but they can receive some items from the album, such as photocards or postcards for example.
    • Digipack/compact: an album that looks like western mainstream CDs.
    • Poca/nemo/platform: very small albums that do not contain a CD. To listen to the album, you usually need to scan a QR code or use an app corresponding to the album format.