Every guide, blog post and explainer on JP Sheet is researched, written and verified by people with deep, first-hand experience of the Japanese auto industry. Here's exactly how we work โ and the standards we hold ourselves to.
Last comprehensive review: 19 September 2026Specific over vague. Verifiable over impressive. Independent over influenced. We won't publish a claim we can't back up โ that's what trust actually means.
All JP Sheet content is written and edited by our in-house team of Japanese auction industry specialists. Our team has deep, hands-on experience verifying Japanese vehicles โ every author can read original Japanese auction sheets and works directly with the auction data we write about.
We do not accept guest posts. We do not publish content from freelancers or content marketing agencies. Every author has direct, hands-on experience with the systems they write about โ they can read original Japanese auction sheets, distinguish a Grade 4 from a 4.5R with photographic evidence, identify damage codes by sight, and have personally inspected vehicles at major Japanese auction houses.
You can see the people behind the content on our Authors page.
Every technical claim on JP Sheet is verified against primary sources โ the live Japanese auction database that powers our verification service, not secondary blog posts or aggregator sites.
Every article passes through two reviewers before going live:
We err on the side of caution. If we are unsure about a statistic, we either confirm it from a primary source within 24 hours or we cut the claim from the article. We would rather publish less and be right than publish more and be wrong.
The Japanese auction industry evolves โ new auction houses open, grading conventions shift slightly, damage codes get refined. To stay accurate:
If we publish something wrong, we want to fix it fast. Here is exactly how we handle corrections:
Minor fixes โ typos, broken links, formatting โ are corrected silently without a notice. Substantive factual corrections always get acknowledged on the page.
Yes, independent. No undisclosed conflicts. Specifically:
We do not accept payment in exchange for editorial coverage of any product, service, auction house, exporter, dealer, shipping company or related business. If we ever did, it would be labelled "Sponsored" or "Paid Partnership" before the headline โ but as a matter of policy, we don't.
Our verification service connects to Japan-wide auction coverage across Japan. We don't favour any one auction house, dealer panel or salvage network in our editorial coverage. Where we discuss specific players in the industry, we cover the major ones consistently.
Our blog and guides do not earn affiliate commission. The only links we publish are to our own services or to authoritative external references (auction houses, regulators, technical standards). We have no financial incentive to recommend any third-party.
We do not remove or amend factual editorial content in response to legal threats unless the content was demonstrably wrong on its facts. Where there is a legitimate factual dispute, we follow our corrections policy above.
Honesty here is important โ readers should know what's written by a human and what isn't.
We are not American, and we say so. Our expertise was built on Japanese auction sheets over years of reading them. US vehicle history is newer ground for us, and we hold that content to a stricter sourcing rule because of it.
Where the claim is factual, we cite the source. Title brands, odometer rules, what NMVTIS holds and what it does not — these come from the federal database’s own documentation and state DMV publications, not from other blogs repeating each other.
Where practice varies by state, we say which state. “A salvage title means X” is usually wrong, because it means different things in different states. That is exactly why title washing works, and writing as though the rules were uniform would mislead the reader about the risk.
Where we do not know, we do not fill the gap. A guide that stops short is more useful than one that guesses fluently.
This policy covers our guides and blog. The verification reports customers buy follow a different and stricter standard, and it is worth being clear about the difference.
A report states what the record says, and nothing more. Our own reading is labelled as such and kept separate from the record itself. Where a sheet is ambiguous, the report says it is ambiguous rather than picking the reassuring interpretation.
We are never paid to reach a conclusion. Nobody — not a seller, not an exporter, not a dealer — can pay us to grade a car more kindly. A finding that costs a seller a sale gets written exactly the same way as one that does not.
If a report is wrong, tell us and we search again by hand, free. Our transparency report publishes how many problems were reported and how many we resolved, because a corrections policy nobody can check is just a paragraph.
Our primary sources include:
We do not rely on third-party blogs, content aggregators or scraped data as primary sources. Where we reference an external claim, we cite the original publication and date.
Most articles are written collaboratively by our team rather than by a single author. Where one specific team member led the research, we attribute the article to them. Where multiple team members contributed substantially, we attribute it to the JP Sheet team and list the contributors on the Authors page.
We never use fictional or AI-generated bylines. Every name attached to a JP Sheet article is a real person on our team.
For corrections, attribution requests, or any editorial concern:
We acknowledge every submission within 48 hours. We respect the time of people who flag errors โ we treat your message as a contribution, not a complaint.
Tell us โ we acknowledge within 48 hours and credit you for the catch.
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