Great write-up — the T.S. sticks are the part of the Destroyer line that never really made it out of Japan in any volume, so most of us only ever read about them.
For anyone reading this and wondering what one actually costs today rather than back when it was current: I pulled the Japanese secondhand listings this week. Destroyer T.S. blanks specifically are sitting around 62,000-66,500 yen (roughly $430-460 at today's rate) — TS72X was 62,370, the TS79X one-piece grip joint 64,845, TS82X 66,330. The wider Destroyer line is a completely different story: there were 35 in-stock rods over 15,000 yen when I looked, and the older F-series sticks (F3-58TXS, F5-68X Bandersnatch, F5-510X Jig Special) start around 16,000-17,500 yen, i.e. about $110-120. That gap between "T.S." and "everything else Destroyer" is worth knowing before you start hunting.
The catch is the same one that always applies: neither Mercari Japan nor Yahoo! Auctions ships outside Japan, so you either buy through someone in Japan or you use a forwarding/proxy service. And rods make that harder than reels — the two-piece and grip-joint models tube up fine, but a one-piece 7'8"+ blank runs into courier length limits, so check the tube length against the carrier before you commit to a bid.
Full disclosure so nobody has to guess: I work on OneMall, which is one of those proxy services, so treat the two links below as what they are. The first is our write-up of how JDM tackle sourcing works end to end (which marketplaces, new vs. used, consolidating a rod and reels into one shipment); the second is just the live Megabass Destroyer listings so you can see the current asking prices for yourself.
[url=
https://blog.onemall.jp/2026/07/27/japa ... gear_exter]Buying JDM Shimano and Daiwa tackle out of Japan — the full how-to[/url]
[url=
https://www.onemall.jp/search?keyword=% ... gear_exter]Current Megabass Destroyer listings on the Japanese marketplaces[/url]
