2018 In Review - Everything else (including Korea)

January 5, 2019, 7:56 am

≫ Next: 2019 BBM Time Travel 1979

≪ Previous: 2018 In Review - Epoch

Here's a summary of everything I know of that was issued in Japan by someone other than BBM, Calbee and Epoch in 2018 (plus the Korean sets):

Hits issued eight of their "mini colored paper" sets this year. These were all relatively small sets - 8-15 cards plus parallels. Five of these were team sets for the Carp, Swallows and Hawks plus two for the Baystars - one I guess "regular" one and a later one called "Fierce Battle". They also issued three single player sets to celebrate the player reaching a particular milestone - Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh's 150th home run, Yasuaki Yamasaki's 100th save and Seiichi Uchikawa's 2000th hit.

I learned from Ryan recently that Konami has issued a set called Baseball Collection. I don't know much about it but it is some sort of collectible card game - looks like you use the cards in an on-line game. I have no idea how many cards there but I do know for sure that they are physical cards as I've seen a couple for sale on Ebay. This is the first set offered by Konami in several years and the first collectible card game set for NPB in Japan since Bandai's last Owners League set in 2015.

There were at least two team issued sets that were apparently marketed nationwide (as opposed to only being available to team's fan clubs). One was a "comprehensive" team set for the Eagles while the other highlighted a subset of the Baystars players.

There were a couple food related sets. For the third consecutive year Nippon-Ham and BBM teamed up on a Fighters team set that was given away with packages of "Home Run Sausage". The set has a total of 147 cards that appears to include two cards for every player on the Fighters' roster plus the manager and the mascots - I think the cards were issued in two separate series. There are also 44 or so "rare" cards split between "We Love Hokkaido" and "Hokkaido Be Ambitious" sets. There was also a 36 card set of Central League players (six per team) given away one at a time in packages of "Central League Home Run" popsicles from Meito.

There were also baseball cards for the Marines being given away with "Victory" meals at Lotteria stands at Chiba Marine Stadium. There were 10 cards in total. I'm not positive but I think there are similar sets being given away with meals at other stadiums - I had a conversation with Deanna Rubin at one point last year talking about the Lions cards she'd gotten with bento boxes at Seibu Dome.

There were at least 76 baseball cards issued in Japan last year which is the most since I started counting in 2013.

After a down year in 2017 there was quite a resurgence in Korean baseball cards this year. Daewon Media picked up the KBO license after SMG/Duael/Ntreev had lost it after 2016 and ended up issuing several sets under the "SCC" label. They did a "2017" set to cover the gap left when no one did a set that year, then issued another five sets for 2018 - the "All Star Stickers" set, the KBO Collection set,the KBO Collection 2 Red And Black sets (which each included half the teams) and the KBO Collection Premium set. In addition Dan Skrezyna did two self published sets under the "Vittum" label - the "Foreign Attack" set featuring all the foreign players in the KBO in 2016 and the "Home Run King" set featuring the top ten home run hitters from 2016. There was also a 12 card team set for the Hanwha Eagles that was apparently given away with a calendar.

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2019 BBM Time Travel 1979

January 5, 2019, 12:53 pm

≫ Next: Favorite Card Of 2018

≪ Previous: 2018 In Review - Everything else (including Korea)

BBM's first set with a cover date of 2019 came out about three weeks ago. It's the third edition of their annual Time Travel set. The point of these sets is to highlight a particular year and this year's edition is 1979. (I will mention that the fact that 2019 is 40 years after 1979 is probably a coincidence since the previous two editions were for 1975 and 1989 but I'll change my mind if net year they do 1980.)

1979 is kind of a watershed year for NPB. Over the 1978-79 offseason the Taiheiyo Club Lions were sold to Seibu and the team moved from Fukuoka to Tokorozawa. This would be the last team sold, moved or renamed until 1989 when the Hawks were sold by Nankai to Daiei and moved from Osaka to Fukuoka and the Braves were sold by Hankyu to Orix. This might not seem like a big deal but the 10 year period between 1979 and 1988 is the longest period in NPB history where no team was sold, merged, moved or renamed. (2019 will be the eighth consecutive year of the current NPB team "situation" - the last change was DeNA buying the Baystars before the 2012 season.)

The set has a base set of 96 cards which is three cards less than the two previous editions. Like the two previous editions the cards have a retro feel to them - they have a matte finish rather than the usual glossy finish and monochromatic backs rather than the standard full color ones. The bulk of the cards in the set are the 72 player cards which (as usual) are split evenly among the 12 NPB teams. The cards are meant to look like they were actually issued in 1979 as the backs only contain stats up to and including that year.

I'm going to skip my usual nit-picking about who got left out of the set. There's only 72 cards so someone's going to be left out. I'll focus instead on who's in the set. I was excited to see that Choji Murata was in the set as he pretty much hasn't shown up in a BBM set since 2004! He was in the 2009 BBM Legends set that I think was issued as magazine inserts, the 2009 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation set and I think he's in a Bandai Owners League set but other than that his last cards were in the 2004 Golden Arm, 70th Anniversary and Marines sets. Other notable players in the set are Sadaharu Oh, Tsutomu Wakamatsu (who I think is the only player to appear in all three Time Travel sets so far), Katsuya Nomura, Masayuki Kakefu, Koichi Tabuchi, Koji Yamamoto, Jinten Haku, Sachio Kinugasa, Yutaka Fukumoto, Hisashi Yamada, Morimichi Takagi and Masaji Hiramatsu. There are "rookie" cards (with the same rookie icon used in the 2018 BBM cards) for several players including Suguru Egawa and Shigekazu Mori. There's six foreign players - Charlie Manuel, Jim Lyttle, Felix Millan, John Sipin and the Lee brothers - Leon and Leron. (OK, I can't resist - significant players who aren't in the set are Senichi Hoshino, Keishi Suzuki and Isao Harimoto.)

The cards themselves have a nice design - I can't off hand think of any other sets BBM's done with colored borders although I'm probably forgetting something. I like the little 1973 Topps-ish position icon in the lower right although it would have been better if they'd used more symbols than just a pitcher and a batter. BBM used a pretty good variety of photos in the set although they used a couple black and white photos for some reason. Here's some example cards:

#27

#23

#42

#11

#55

#54

Here's what the card backs look like:

#04 (Sachio Kinugasa)

The remaining 24 cards in the set are split between four different subsets. There are six cards for players who retired after the 1979 season - Takenori (Iwao) Ikebe, Kiyoshi Morimoto, Yozo Nagabuchi, Atsushi Nagaike, Yoshihiro Sotokoba and Soroku Yagisawa.

#76

There are eight cards showing baseball highlights from 1979 - the first home game for the Seibu Lions (and the opening of then Seibu Stadium) on April 14th (not sure if it was their first ever game or not), Makoto Shimada stealing three bases in one inning on June 5th, Charlie Manuel being hit in the face on June 9th, Yoshihiko Takahashi's 33 game hitting streak from June 6th to July 31st (longest in NPB history), Shigeru Kobayashi's 8 consecutive wins against the Giants from April 4th to September 5th (Kobayashi had been traded to the Tigers from the Giants the previous off season as compensation for the Giants signing Tigers draft pick Egawa), Kintetsu winning their first ever Pacific League pennant on October 16th, the Carp winning their first ever Nippon Series on November 4th and the Giants "Hell Camp" from October 28th to November 22 (not quite sure what this was). Here's the card for the Lions first home game:

#79

There's a six card subset featuring people born in 1979. In the two previous sets the people in the "Born In X" subset have all been baseball players but this set's a little different. In addition to five players (Shinnosuke Abe, Kazuyuki Hoashi, Yoshiyuki Ishihara, Akinori Iwamura and Atsushi Nohmi), BBM also included a card for politician Taizo Sugimura (who apparently played tennis in his youth).

#90

#91

The final subset in the set contains four cards dedicated to Pop Culture from 1979. The cards are for the rock band Godiego's song "Gandhara", enka singer Sachiko Kobayashi's song "Omoide Sake" (best selling song of the year in Japan), the introduction of the NEC PC-8001 personal computer and the debut of the anime series "The Rose Of Versailles". Here's the card for Kobayashi:

#94

If it's not obvious I really like this set. I've been enjoying BBM's Time Travel series and I think this is the best one so far. You can take a look at all the card (including the insert cards which feature statistical leaders and award winners from the year) over at Jambalaya.

In a bit of synchronicity - the radio station I listen to (WXPN out of Philadelphia) is doing a special program each Saturday during 2019 where they highlight the music from one year out of the past 50. As it happens the year they've chosen for today was 1979 so I've had appropriate background music as I've been writing this post. Although there's a song from the mid-90's that would have been appropriate as well:

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Favorite Card Of 2018

January 5, 2019, 5:18 pm

≫ Next: Yusei Kikuchi Of The Seattle Mariners

≪ Previous: 2019 BBM Time Travel 1979

P-Town Tom of Waiting 'til Next Year is again running a contest/challenge for bloggers to pick their favorite card of the year. I've waiting so long to decide on a card that I'm almost too late but I finally decided on Daichi Ohsera's card from BBM's 1st Version set this year (#165):

Just a beautiful picture of him warming up on the sidelines at Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium in Hiroshima on a sunny afternoon.

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Yusei Kikuchi Of The Seattle Mariners

January 6, 2019, 6:35 am

≫ Next: Card Of The Week January 6

≪ Previous: Favorite Card Of 2018

Former Saitama Seibu Lions pitcher Yusei Kikuchi signed a contract with the Seattle Mariners last week. Kikuchi had originally been interested in signing directly with an MLB team out of high school in 2009 but like Ohtani a few years later decided to stay in Japan and join an NPB team first (although unlike Ohtani he decided this before the draft). He was taken by six teams in the first round of the 2009 draft (Lions, Tigers, Swallows, Eagles, Dragons and Fighters) and the Lions won the lottery for him. He spent all of 2010 with the Lions' farm team and debuted with the top team in June of 2012. He's been a part of the Lions starting rotation pretty much ever since then and has been their top starter for at least the past three years. His best year was 2017 when he went 16-6 with a 1.97 ERA with four shutouts, leading the Pacific League in wins, ERA and shutouts. He's a three time All Star (2013, 2017-18) and two time Best 9 winner (2017-18). He also won a Golden Glove Award in 2017.

Kikuchi's first BBM cards are #067 from the 2010 Rookie Edition set and #355 from the 2010 1st Version set. He's appears in both the 1st and 2nd Version in 2010 but doesn't appear in either set in 2011. He's only in 1st Version in 2012 but he appears in both sets from 2013 on to the present. His first Calbee card is #078 from the 2010 set. He doesn't have a Calbee card in 2011 but he has at least one every year since then. He also has cards in various Bandai, Front Runner and Epoch sets during his career. TradingCardDB.com has a fairly complete listing of his cards.

I'm going to take a slightly different tack with showing cards for Kikuchi than what I usually do for the new imports. Instead of showing a bunch of cards from the entire span of his career I'm going to concentrate on his early cards instead. This is mostly due to me still recovering from my hip surgery so I want to reduce the number of binders I'm taking off my shelves.

2010 BBM Rookie Edition #067

2010 BBM 1st Version #355

2010 BBM 2nd Version #688

2010 Calbee #078

2010 SCM #157

2010 BBM Lions #L74

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Card Of The Week January 6

January 6, 2019, 7:52 am

≫ Next: Package From Ryan

≪ Previous: Yusei Kikuchi Of The Seattle Mariners

There are currently two independent minor leagues operating in Japan - the Shikoku Island League and Baseball Challenge (BC) League. There are known baseball cards for the Shikoku Island League teams (some of which I have - some SCM cards, some random cards from 2006 and a 2017 team set for the Kochi Fighting Dogs featuring Manny Ramirez) but I had never seen any cards for any of the BC League teams. Jason Presley, who is much better at internet searches than I am, has said that other than a couple oversized cards of Tuffy Rhodes when he was with Toyama he's never seen any cards for any BC League teams. But I still occasionally do searches through Yahoo! Japan Auctions for both the league and the individual teams. Usually I turn up nothing but NPB and US minor league cards of either players who have joined teams in the league or are managing teams. But imagine my surprise a few months back when this turned up:

Naoyuki "Gyaos" Naito was manager of the Niigata Albirex Baseball Club (it's important to add the last two words because there are Niigata Albirex football and basketball teams as well) in 2013-14. He had an 11 year NPB career as a pitcher for the Swallows (1988-94), Marines (1995-96) and Dragons (1996-97). His nickname comes from a monster in the Gamera movies.

So what's the story with this card? Did BBM do a set for the BC League in 2014 that I somehow missed? Seems unlikely and there's no card number on the card so there's no implication that there's any other cards.

I found a clue on the card. It might be a little hard to tell in the scan but the card has an authentication embossing on the lower right side on the front that says "BBM-Event Authentic Autograph". So besides telling us that that's a real autograph from Naito on the card, it also says that it's from some BBM-Event. I went spelunking through BBM's on-line list of events and found this event from September 13, 2014. It was at Ohara Sports Park, one of the home stadiums that the Albirex uses, at the same time that they were playing the Shinano Grandserows. I'm not quite sure how this worked but I think if you bought 1000 yen worth of BBM cards at the event you would "receive 1 copy of Limited Promotional Card with direct autograph by Director Gaio Naito" (according to the Google translation of the text). So it looks like this was a one off promotional giveaway by BBM. I don't know if there are other similar cards out there but it's probably worth a look.

I received this card yesterday in the mail with a whole lot of other stuff from Ryan. They will be keeping me busy for a while although I'll be posting about what I got from him as I go. I've been posting like a madman the last couple days just trying to get some somewhat time sensitive stuff done before his package showed up. I almost succeeded!

And I want to as usual thank Ryan for picking up stuff for me. I think at least a third of my collection in the past few years has passed through his hands at some point.

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Package From Ryan

January 6, 2019, 5:04 pm

≫ Next: 2018 Epoch One

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week January 6

As I mentioned in my previous post I got a package from Ryan yesterday. I'll be doing a number of posts about specific sets that Ryan got for me but I thought I'd start with one that just covered some of the random cards he found for me. Some of these are specific things he was looking for for me and others are things he surprised me with.

First up are a bunch of cards from my want list - a bunch of "secret versions" from 2017, one of the two "Real Venus" cards I wanted to complete my collection of all the female baseball players from the sets and one of the "All Tournament Team" inserts from the 2009 Konami WBC Heroes set:

2017 BBM 2nd Version #479 (Secret Version)

2017 BBM Fusion #063 (Secret Version)

2017 BBM Fusion #057 (Secret Version)

2017 BBM Fusion #046 (Secret Version)

2010 BBM Real Venus #33

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09A009

He also picked up a bunch of the 1994 BBM cards I needed, reducing my want list to just 16 cards! Although 15 of them are rare low number Swallows cards and the other is Hiroki Kokubo's rookie card so it's not like the remainder is going to be cheap. There were 27 1994 cards that I needed in the box - one low number Swallow, 9 Leader cards and 17 high number Swallows. I'll only show a couple of these:

1994 BBM #14

1994 BBM #270

1994 BBM #275

1994 BBM Late Series #596

1994 BBM Late Series #574

Then there's the stuff he surprised me with. He got me a couple double sided promo cards for 2010 BBM 1st Version. One of them has Kazuki Yoshimi on one side and Masahiro Tanaka on the other while the other one has Kenta Maeda on one side and Yoshihisa Naruse on the other:

Nippon-Ham and BBM have been putting out Fighters cards with packages of "Home Run Sausage" the past couple years and Ryan got me a Sho Nakata card from the 2018 set. The first series of these cards feature photos taken during the first part of training camp so I'm pretty sure this photo was taken in Scottsdale, Arizona last February:

Nippon-Ham #N47

Speaking of Sho Nakata, Ryan also picked me up this oversized (roughly 3x5 inches) team issued "bromide" card of Nakata from 2011:

Going from big to small he got me this oddball Tigers card from 2003. It's about 1 1/2 inches wide and 2 3/4 inches high. I can't find the set in Engel although it is very similar to a set called "2003 Top Foods Hanshin Tigers Championship". I wonder if Top Foods did second set for the Tigers in 2003, maybe earlier in the season (before they won the Central League championship). Oddly enough I thing I have another card from this same unknown set - it's of Lou Pote.

2003 Top Foods Tigers(?) #071

He also included a handful of pocket schedules (although the Tigers schedule is 3 1/2 by 5 inches so it'd be a pretty big pocket):

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2018 Epoch One

January 7, 2019, 5:47 pm

≫ Next: More Epoch Cards From Ryan

≪ Previous: Package From Ryan

I talked a little about the Epoch One cards the other day in my wrap up of 2018 for Epoch but I wanted to talk a little more in detail about the cards, especially since I got 10 of them in the package I got from Ryan the other day.

Epoch One is essentially Epoch's version of Topps Now. Epoch makes cards available on their website for 500 yen apiece for a short period of time (seems to be around three days which is longer than the 24 hours Topps Now cards are available). The print run for each card is determined by the number of orders of it. The cards commemorate notable events during the regular season, the Climax Series, the Nippon Series and the NPB draft (held in October).

Epoch did a total of 680 Epoch One cards in 2018. For some reason they only did them for seven of the teams - the Carp (113 cards), the Dragons (84 cards), the Fighters (94 cards), the Giants (102 cards), the Lions (120 cards), the Marines (74 cards) and the Tigers (93 cards). Each card has two numbers on it - the overall card number (1-680) and the team specific number (the Giants cards are YG-001-102, the Marines cards are CM-001-074, etc).

I have 11 of these cards - the 10 I asked Ryan to pick up for me plus another one I got from someone on Amazon.

#148/NF-020

#328/CM-037

#351/SL-054

#363/CM-041

#407/SL-062

#412/NF-062

#422/YG-064

#514/HC-080

#557/HT-087

#606/CD-073

#648/YG-101

I don't remember what all of these commemorate but I know that I have the cards for Kioymiya's first hit, Yamaguchi and Sugano's no-hitters and a sayanora home run for Kimura. I was aiming at getting at least one card per team and I also wanted to pick up cards showing alternate uniforms for when I get around to updating my uniform posts.

Here's what one of the card backs look like:

You can see the overall card number in the upper left corner, the team specific card number in the lower right corner and the print run in the lower left corner. The cards are not serially numbered.

I'm a bit surprised at how low some of the print runs are. Eight of the cards have print runs of less than 100 with the Iguchi card being the lowest at only 39. The Yamaguchi no-hitter card has a surprisingly low print run of 93. The Mysterious Fish card has a run of 109 and the Sugano no-hitter card has a run of 234. On the other end of the spectrum, the Kiyomiya card had a print run of 1775! (I don't think the print runs are on-line on Epoch's website anywhere.)

One weird thing I noticed - it looks like most of the cards except for the Lions cards have a different photo on the back than the front. But for whatever reason all the Lions cards appear to have a cropped version of the front photo on the back:

As with other things Epoch did in 2018 I'll be curious to see if they continue doing Epoch One cards in 2019. I wouldn't mind getting some more of these. There are many available on Yahoo! Japan Auctions - a lot of them are priced at 756 yen but I've seen a couple as low as 400 yen.

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More Epoch Cards From Ryan

January 8, 2019, 6:51 pm

≫ Next: To Infinity...But Not Beyond

≪ Previous: 2018 Epoch One

Back when I used to collect MLB cards in the late 90's I usually bought the Topps or Fleer set every year but I'd get frustrated that there were players who weren't included in the sets. I used to augment my collection with cards of missing players from Upper Deck or Pacific sets. I have the same desire to get cards of every NPB player I can which is one of the reasons I started picking up all the BBM "comprehensive" team sets a few years back. But those sets only include players on each team's 70 man roster - what about the ikusei or developmental players?

Epoch this past year issued comprehensive team sets (called "Rookies & Stars") for seven of the 12 NPB teams - the Carp, Lions, Swallows, Baystars, Dragons, Buffaloes and Tigers. They included ikusei players with five of those teams - the Lions, Baystars, Dragons, Buffaloes and Tigers although the only teams they included ALL of ikusei players for were the Lions (2 players) and Baystars (6 players). I asked Ryan to pick up the cards of these players for all the teams except the Lions since I intended to get the complete Lions set (and I still do). Here's the other cards:

18 Epoch Dragons Rookies & Stars #36

18 Epoch Dragons Rookies & Stars #42

18 Epoch Tigers Rookies & Stars #37a

18 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #35a

18 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #59a

18 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #42a

18 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #43a

18 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #63

18 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #44

18 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #38

18 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #37

18 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #36

18 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #64

The couple cards with an "a" in their card number actually have multiple versions in the set they're from.

By the way Tamura was registered to the Baystars 70 man roster at the end of July and pitched in one game for the ichi-gun team. The rest of the players remain developmental players.

The Dragons and Baystars team sets also included cards for the farm team manager so I asked Ryan to pick those up for me as well:

18 Epoch Dragons Rookies & Stars #02

18 Epoch Baystars Rookies & Stars #02

Speaking of Epoch cards, Ryan included a one card promo pack for their flagship set from last year called "NPB":

The pack contained a promo card of Ken Togame of the Lions. The card is identical to the Togame's card in the set except for the "Promotion Card" text on the front:

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To Infinity...But Not Beyond

January 9, 2019, 5:55 pm

≫ Next: 2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary Celebration Set

≪ Previous: More Epoch Cards From Ryan

I'm pretty much a one trick pony when it comes to spectator sports - I'm really not all that interested in anything other than baseball anymore. This is especially true when it comes to trading cards - I'm just not that interested in collecting any sport other than baseball.

With that in mind you can understand why I've never gone in for the recent multi-sport sets that BBM has issued. They did their first one - Masterpiece - in 2016 to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of BBM Magazine Sha, the magazine publisher that is BBM's parent company. They followed that in each of the next two years with a set called Infinity. All of these sets have featured baseball players but for the most part I've felt they've just had a kind of run-of-the-mill selection of players. I say for the most part because I was interested in (and asked Ryan to get for me) three of the cards from the 2017 set that featured famous amateur players.

I noticed something interesting about the baseball players in the 2018 set - they all fell into one of two categories. Either they spent time playing in MLB (or at least MLB organizations) or they were related to another baseball player. There are 36 baseball cards in the set and 26 are of players with experience in North America - Masanori Murakami, Satoru Komiyama, Masao Kida, Keiichi Yabu, So Taguchi, Tsuyoshi Shinjyo, Yasuhiko Yabuta, Tadahito Iguchi, Hisanori Takahashi, Mac Suzuki, Kenshin Kawakami, Hideki Okajima, Yoshinori Tateyama, Kenji Johjima, Akinori Iwamura, Koji Uehara, Kazuo Matsui, Kosuke Fukudome, Ryota Igarashi, Kyuji Fujikawa, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tsuyoshi Wada, Kensuke Tanaka, Norichika Aoki, Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Toru Murata. (Off hand this is probably less than half of all the Japanese players to play in MLB.) The remaining ten players can be grouped by their familial relationships - there's the father/son duo of Katsuya and Katsunori Nomura, the uncle/nephew duo of Tatsunori Hara and Tomoyuki Sugano; the brothers Matsunuma (Hirohisa and Masayuki) and Tomashino (Kenji and Seiji) and the brother/sister pair of Shingo and Yuki Kawabata.

I asked Ryan to pick up only one of these 36 cards - the card of Yuki Kawabata:

#036

The back of Kawabata's card uses the same image as the front of the card - I'm assuming that's the case for all the player cards.

#036

The set had an interesting subset however called "Family Ties" that showcased the relationships between the ballplayers. I asked Ryan to pick up all five of the baseball related ones (the subset actually contains 13 cards - the others show relationships in track, curling, sumo, wrestling, football and motor sports. One of the families showcased are the three Murofushi siblings who I think are all hammer throwers). (And I don't know why the Hara/Sugano card is "Kinship Ties" rather than "Family Ties".)

#092

#093

#094

#095

#096

The one disappointing thing about these cards is they use the same image as the player's regular card both on the front and on the back, with the exception of the Nomura card which has a photo of the two of them when Katsuya was managing Katsunori with the Swallows in the 90's:

#092

#094

Ryan included a couple of the "Sparkly Sky" insert cards from this set and they show that BBM continued being lazy in the images they used - they are the same ones as from the player cards. And it's on the back of the insert card as well. So that image of Sugano is used six times total on the front and back of three cards - on his "regular" player card, his "Family Ties" card and his "Sparkly Sky" insert card:

#SS06

#SS03

You can see all the cards for the set over at Jambalaya.

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2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary Celebration Set

January 10, 2019, 4:42 pm

≫ Next: Giants Postcards from 1976 or 1977

≪ Previous: To Infinity...But Not Beyond

I wanted to do a quick post on the BBM box set "Hawks 80th Anniversary Celebration" that Ryan picked up for me. This is a 27 card set (well 28 card really but the 28th card is a premium card) for the Hawks. It ties into the Hawks 80th Anniversary in two ways - the 18 player cards all depict Hawks players wearing the team's 80th Anniversary alternate uniforms while the remaining 9 cards are the finale of the "Hawks History" cards.

The 18 players featured in the set are the main Hawks stars - Yuki Yanagita, Nobuhiro Matsuda, Seiichi Uchikawa, Seiji Uebayashi, Akira Nakamura, Alfredo Despaigne, Shota Takeda and Rick Van Den Hurk. Here's some example cards:

#10

#08

#06

One thing I thought was kind of neat on the back of the cards is the history of the uniform number of the player, some of which go back all the way to 1938. Here's the back of Hiroaki Takaya's card as an example:

#07

BBM did a kind of interesting thing by creating a cross set subset called "Hawks History" which (obviously) covers the history of the team since 1938. The first nine cards were in last spring's Hawks 80th Anniversary set and covered the years from 1938 to 1968. The next nine cards were in last summer's Hawks team set and covered from 1969 to 1988, the final year they were owned by Nankai and played in Osaka. The nine cards in this set cover 1989 to 2017 - the time period they were owned by Daiei and Softbank and played in Fukuoka. Here's an example card showing the team's first game in Fukuoka in 1989:

#HH19

As always you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.

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Giants Postcards from 1976 or 1977

January 11, 2019, 3:15 pm

≫ Next: New Cards For The New Year

≪ Previous: 2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary Celebration Set

Ryan surprised me by including a bunch of postcards featuring Giants players in the package he sent me last week. They appear to be from the mid-1970's:

Shozo Doi

Isao Harimoto

Tsuneo Horiuchi

Shigeo Nagashima

Hisao Niura

Toshimitsu Suetsugo

Assuming they're all from the same set or issued at the same time they can be from no earlier than 1976 (since Harimoto didn't join the Giants until then) and no later than 1977 (Suetsugo's final season). Since Suetsugo only played in 3 game in 1977 the postcards are most likely from 1977.

Here's what the back of Harimoto's postcard looks like:

I don't know what the text on the bottom left says but I do recognize Harimoto's name in it. The text is different on each card.

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New Cards For The New Year

January 12, 2019, 6:49 pm

≫ Next: 2018 SCC All Star Stickers

≪ Previous: Giants Postcards from 1976 or 1977

There's a couple new sets that have been announced in the last couple weeks:

- Epoch is putting out another "Season Achievements" team set, this time for the Eagles. This is another one of their ultra high end sets with a box containing two packs containing four cards each retailing for 12,200 yen. Each box is guaranteed to contain an autograph card. The base set has 36 cards and there's a parallel version of each card. There's also three different autographed versions for each card as well as jersey and patch cards. The set was originally scheduled to come out in December but got pushed back to January 26th.

- The Yakult Swallows won their first ever Nippon Series in 1978 and Epoch is issuing yet another ultra high end set to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of it. This one is called "Yakult Swallows First V - 40th Anniversary". Each box retails for 14,300 yen and it looks to me that it only includes 2 cards! I'm probably not understanding the Google translation of the set correctly but I don't think there's an actual base set to this set - it's all autographed cards, so both cards in the box are autographed ones. There's a variety of different ones including I think autographed memorabilia cards (uniforms and balls). There's also a card that's autographed by both Katsuya Nomura and Atsuya Furuta available. Now you might ask yourself why a set that's celebrating the 1978 Nippon Series Champion Swallows would have cards of Nomura and Furuta in it since Nomura spent 1978 with the Lotte Orions and Furuta was a 13 year junior high school student but that'd just be a silly question. Looking at the list of players in the set there's maybe two I see who were on the team (Tsutomu Wakamatsu and manager Tatsuro Hirooka) and a bunch who played for the team later (Atsunori Inaba, Akinori Iwamura, Daisuke Araki, Jack Howell). In fairness a lot of these players played on the Swallows other Nippon Series winning teams from 1993, 1995, 1997 and 2001. Nomura managed the first three of those teams and Wakamatsu managed the other. The set will be released on February 9th.

- The eighth edition of BBM's annual box set dedicated to the retiring players of the previous year will be released in early February (Jambalaya says February 2nd). As always I'm not sure what the name of this set really is - the translation this year is coming out as something like "Kurosubi Ballpark" but previous years it's been something like "Regret at Parting Baseball Players" - but I always call it "Farewell". This year's edition will contain 37 cards - a 36 card base set plus an autographed card. The players in the set include Takahiro Arai, Shuichi Murata, Hitoki Iwase, Kazuo Matsui and Takahiro Araki.

- On the other end of the player career spectrum, BBM's annual draft pick set called "Rookie Edition" will be released in mid-February. This is a pack based set that features the players taken in last October's NPB draft. Normally this would be the first cards of these players in their NPB uniforms but Epoch One had cards of the Dragons' draft picks available in December. The base set contains 117 cards - 104 for the draft picks, 1 card showing all the draft picks, and 12 "Early Days" cards which are pretty much just an excuse to get cards of other players in the set so BBM can have autograph cards of them available. 83 of the draft pick cards (the non-ikusei picks) have facsimile autograph parallels available. There are two insert sets - a 12 card "Next Generation" set and a 2 card "Rookie Of The Year" - and a wide variety of possible autograph cards.

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2018 SCC All Star Stickers

January 13, 2019, 10:58 am

≫ Next: Card Of The Week January 13

≪ Previous: New Cards For The New Year

I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I got home from work on New Year's Eve - Dan had sent me a package containing 14 packs of 2018 SCC KBO All Star stickers with the accompanying album. This was a 218 "card" set put out by Daewon Media last summer (it was intended to be 220 cards but the cards of two Nexen players accused of sexual assault were removed from the set). This was the second SCC set of 2018 and the first that actually was for the 2018 season - the first was a "catch-up set" for the 2017 season.

Despite the name of the set it is not a set for the KBO All Star game - you probably figured that out from the size of it. There are 22 cards for each of the 10 KBO teams (with the exception of the previous mentioned Nexen which only has 20 due to the two cards being pulled). At 2 1/4 by 3 inches the cards are a little smaller than the standard size. If you pulled them off their backing the stickers themselves would be about 1 3/4 by 2 1/2 inches. The photos are all head shots (mug shots really) and the backs have no biographical information (which makes sense since they are stickers that are intended to be put in an album). Some of them are classified as "Rare" where the player's name and number are highlighted - I don't know if these are actually short printed or not. There was a card distributed with the album that was "holo" but I think this was a parallel version as I got a non-holo version of the card in one of the packs.

There are supposedly three cards per pack but two of the packs Dan sent me actually had four cards in them so I got a total of 44 cards from the packs. If you include the card that came in the album I have 45 cards total. Nine of those were duplicates - including the "normal" version of the "holo" card I got with the album (Kang Baek-Ho). That seems like a lot to me. Dan says the collation for the set was terrible. He had mentioned a friend buying something like 10 boxes (each box had 30 packs so at least 90 cards per box) but wasn't able to put together a complete set.

Here's what a couple of the cards look like:

#88 Park Han-Yi

#3 Lee Yong-Chan

#112 Lim Chang-Yong "Rare" card

#106 Kang Baek-Ho "Holo" and regular cards

I mentioned that the backs didn't have any biographical information. What they do have is the one nod to the actual KBO All Star game. Since all 10 teams are in a single league there's no natural way to split them up for the All Star game. They are somewhat arbitrarily split into the "Dream" (Doosan, KT, Lotte, Samsung and SK) and "Nanum" (Hanwha, Kia, LG, NC and Nexen) teams. The cards for the "Dream" teams have blue backs while the cards of the "Nanum" teams have pink backs:

Here's what the packs look like:

Here's the front cover of the album and a photo showing it open to a random page:

I really appreciate Dan getting me these packs but this really isn't a set that I'd recommend. I personally am not a fan of "mug shot" sets and the decollation issues make this a very difficult set to complete. I recommend the other SCC offerings from last year - the KBO Collection, the two KBO Collection 2 sets - the Red and the Black or the Premium set (which I didn't get) - rather than this set. If you are more curious about this set, Dan's put the checklist up at TradingCardDatabase.com.

Thanks again for sending me the cards Dan!

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Card Of The Week January 13

January 13, 2019, 4:07 pm

≫ Next: 2019 Hall Of Fame Class

≪ Previous: 2018 SCC All Star Stickers

BBM started including insert cards called "Phantom" with their team sets in 2017. These were very limited edition inserts that were serially numbered to 25 each. Each team set had between 6 and 18 of these and they featured active players from the team. BBM continued having them with their team sets in 2018 and also added 12 "Phantom" inserts of OB players to their Fusion set in November.

I got curious about these cards and ended up getting one relatively cheaply on Ebay. It's for Tetsuya Yamaguchi of the Giants and I think it ran me $10 or less. Here's the front and back of it:

You can take a quick look at this search on Yahoo! Japan Auctions to see what these cards are selling for. At the time I did the search the cheapest was Sho Nakata's 2018 card which was only 1000 yen while the most expensive was Shohei Ohtani's card from last year (and apparently has serial number 01) which is priced at 30,000 yen (about $275). Most appear to be in the 3000 to 5000 yen range.

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2019 Hall Of Fame Class

January 15, 2019, 5:34 pm

≫ Next: Fighters In Arizona, 2019 Edition

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week January 13

The Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame announced its 2019 inductees today. Longtime Chunichi Dragons infielder Kazuyoshi Tatsunami was the sole candidate on the Players Selection Committee to garner enough votes for election while Hiroki Gondoh, a pitcher/infielder for the Dragons in the 1960's and manager of the Yokohama Baystars in the late 90's (including their Nippon Series Championship in 1998) as well as a coach for a number of teams, was the sole inductee from the Expert Division. The Special Division also elected Haruo Wakimura who was involved with high school baseball. The vote tallies can be seen here.

Here are cards of Tatsunami and Gondoh - pretty sure there aren't any of Wakimura:

Kazuyoshi Tatsunami

1988 Takara Dragons #3

1999 Calbee #080

2009 BBM 1st Version #306

Hiroshi Gondoh

1962 Doyusha JCM 55

2006 BBM Nostalgic Stars #105

1998 BBM Nippon Series #S1

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Fighters In Arizona, 2019 Edition

January 17, 2019, 6:26 pm

≫ Next: 2018 BBM Team Sets

≪ Previous: 2019 Hall Of Fame Class

For the fourth consecutive year the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters are doing the first part of their spring camp in Arizona. Like last year it will be at Salt River Fields At Talking Stick in Scottsdale, the spring training home of the Rockies and Diamondbacks. The team will be there from February 1st to the 12th. Their schedule is available on the team's website (in Japanese of course) but the important days to note are off days on the 3rd and 8th, an inter-squad game (Red vs White) on the 9th and a game against the KBO's NC Dinos on the 11th. Both games will be at 12:30.

The Fighters announced who all is coming today. I've translated the list (and hopefully gotten all the names correct). There's a couple notable newcomers to the team on the roster - former Orix Buffaloes ace Chihiro Kaneko and former CPBL star Po-Jung Wang.

Number	Player/Coach	Category
1	Saitoh, Yuki	Pitcher
2	Sugiya, Kenshi	Infielder
5	Ota, Taishi	Outfielder
6	Nakata, Sho	Infielder
7	Nishikawa, Haruki	Outfielder
8	Kondoh, Kensuke	Outfielder
9	Nakashima, Takuya	Infielder
12	Matsumoto, Go	Infielder
14	Kato, Takayuki	Pitcher
15	Uwasawa, Naoyuki	Pitcher
16	Arihara, Kohei	Pitcher
17	Urano, Hiroshi	Pitcher
19	Kaneko, Chihiro	Pitcher
20	Uehara, Kenta	Pitcher
21	Kiyomiya, Kotaro	Infielder
22	Tsuruoka, Shinya	Coach
23	Watanabe, Ryo	Infielder
25	Miyanishi, Naoki	Pitcher
26	Asama, Daiki	Outfielder
27	Martinez, Nick	Pitcher
28	Hancock, Justin	Pitcher
29	Iguchi, Kazutomo	Pitcher
30	Kagiya, Yohei	Pitcher
32	Yachi, Ryota	Infielder
33	Barbato, Johnny	Pitcher
34	Hori, Mizuki	Pitcher
35	Nishimura, Takahiro	Pitcher
36	Nakamura, Masaru	Pitcher
38	Ishii, Kazunari	Infielder
39	Akiyoshi, Ryo	Pitcher
41	Rodriguez, Bryan	Pitcher
42	Kurobane, Toshiki	Catcher
45	Hiranuma, Shota	Infielder
49	Kumon, Katsuhiko	Pitcher
51	Ishikawa, Naoya	Pitcher
52	Miyadei, Kohei	Pitcher
54	Tamai, Taisho	Pitcher
57	Sugiura, Toshihiro	Pitcher
58	Yokoo, Toshitake	Infielder
67	Kishisato, Ryosuke	Outfielder
68	Ishikawa, Ryo	Catcher
73	Ogata, Koichi	Coach
74	Takahashi, Noriyuki	Coach
75	Kawana, Shinichi	Coach
79	Shiroishi, Noriyuki	Coach
80	Kuriyama, Hideki	Manager
84	Atsuzawa, Kazuyuki	Coach
88	Kaneko, Makoto	Coach
92	Kida, Masao	Coach
99	Wang, Po-Jung	Outfielder

There are also three KBO teams training in Arizona this year. The KT Wiz and the afore-mentioned NC Dinos will be training in Tucson from the end of January until March 8th. KT will be at the Kino Sports Complex while I assume that NC will be Hi Corbett Field but I don't know that for sure. The newly renamed Kiwoom Heroes (formerly Nexen) will be in Peoria from January 30th to February 18th and then in Tucson for some period of time afterward.

In addition the defending KBO champion SK Wyverns will be in Vero Beach, Florida from January 30th to February 24th.

I don't think there's a CPBL team training in the US this year but I could be wrong.

Thanks to MyKBO.net for the information on where the KBO teams are training.

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2018 BBM Team Sets

January 18, 2019, 4:34 pm

≫ Next: Card Of The Week January 20

≪ Previous: Fighters In Arizona, 2019 Edition

I want to wrap up my posts about the cards I got in the latest package I got from Ryan. The bulk of what I got were all 12 of BBM's "comprehensive" team sets for 2018.

To be clear - what I call a "comprehensive" team set is a set that contains all the players on the team's 70 man roster which is usually less than 70 players. For the fourth year in a row all the team sets had 81 cards in their base set. Each set included a card of the team's manager with the exception of the Eagles - Masataka Nashida had stepped down as manager in mid-June just before the set went to press and BBM replaced his card in the set with a logo card/checklist instead of interim manager Yusuke Hiraishi (I know they replaced his card with the checklist because it's card #01 of the set while card #01 of all the other sets are that team's manager). All the teams except the Hawks had a card devoted to their mascot(s). Only three of the teams (the Eagles, Swallows and Baystars) had a separate logo card/checklist although a number of the mascot cards had checklists on their backs. Here's the breakdown of the cards in all the sets:

Team	Player/Manager Cards	Mascot Cards	Checklist	Subsets
Chiba Lotte Marines	68	1	0	First Impact (4), Road To 2000 (1), U20 Shining (3), Hotshots (4)
Chunichi Dragons	69	1	0	Winners Never Quit (3), Cosmic Attack (5), Lights On (3)
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks	69	0	0	Highlight Reel (3), Hawks History (9)
Hanshin Tigers	68	1	0	Newcomer (3), Great Record (3), Tigers Starters (3), Rising Stars (3)
Hiroshima Toyo Carp	68	1	0	Top Prospects (3), Pitching Staff (4), Franchise Player (5)
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters	70	1	0	Fresh Breeze (3), The Beginning (4), Centerpiece (3)
Orix Buffaloes	67	1	0	New Bull (2), Rookies (1), 2015 Draft (1), Bs Universe (9)
Saitama Seibu Lions	67	1	0	Catch The Moment (6), Accelerator (3), Reign Men (4)
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles	68	1	1	Record Breakers (3), Fans' Favorites (3), Crimson Soul (5)
Tokyo Yakult Swallows	67	1	1	New Force (3), Welcome Back (3), 2015 Draft (1), Power Hitting (1), Return To The Field (4)
Yokohama DeNA Baystars	68	1	1	Quality Starters (3), Young Guns (3), Heart Of The Order (3), W Aces (1), W Lead-Off (1)
Yomiuri Giants	67	1	0	New Arrivals (4), Giant Guns (3), High Quality Triangle (3), Young Synergy (3)

As always each set features 30 to 35 players who did not appear in either of BBM's "flagship" sets (1st and 2nd Version) this year. This list includes a surprising number of Westerners - Francisco Peguero of the Marines, Radiel Martinez of the Dragons, Alejandro Mejia of the Carp, Josh Corrales and O'Koyea Dickson of the Eagles and Spencer Patton of the Baystars. It also includes 2018 Pacific League Rookie Of The Year Kazuki Tanaka. Here's a card of a player from each set who was not in BBM's flagship sets:

2018 BBM Marines #M21

2018 BBM Dragons #D15

2018 BBM Hawks #H10

2018 BBM Tigers #T43

@018 BBM Carp #C56

2018 BBM Fighters #F44

2018 BBM Buffaloes #Bs02

2018 BBM Lions #L07

2018 BBM Eagles #E62

2018 BBM Swallows #S48

2018 BBM Baystars #DB60

2018 BBM Giants #G03

The Giants set is the only one that has any cards using a horizontal format.

All the sets were released between March and July.

Thanks as always to Ryan for doing all the work to find these sets for me.

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Card Of The Week January 20

January 20, 2019, 3:08 pm

≫ Next: Toshiya Sugiuchi

≪ Previous: 2018 BBM Team Sets

Brandon Laird is changing teams this offseason. After spending four seasons with the Fighters he's now a member of the Chiba Lotte Marines.

Laird has a routine when he homers where he mimics making sushi with his hands. This has earned him the nickname "Sushi-boy". The "Secret Version" of his 2017 BBM 2nd Version card (#383) shows him doing this:

This habit has raised some concerns with one member of his new team. The mascot Nazo No Sakana (the Mysterious Fish) informed Laird via an Instagram post that "All of the fish in Chiba are so delicious, but I am very bad. So you should not make me a sushi item. Please promise it. I'm waiting for you here in Chiba. Mr. Sushi boy!"

I've got three cards of the Mysterious Fish. I think there's at least one more Epoch One card of him that I don't have. Here's the ones I have (including the Epoch One card I showed less than two weeks ago):

2017 BBM 2nd Version #591 (Secret Version)

2018 BBM Marines #M69

2018 Epoch one #328

H/T NPB Reddit for the story.

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Toshiya Sugiuchi

January 20, 2019, 4:43 pm

≫ Next: Kenji Yano

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week January 20

Getting back to the retirement posts...

Pitcher Toshiya Sugiuchi of the Giants announced his retirement back in mid-September. Sugiuchi originally was from Kyushu - he was born in Onojo, went to high school in Kagoshima and played in the corporate leagues for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Nagaski - so it was fitting that he was the third round pick of the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in the 2001 NPB draft. By 2003 he was in the Hawks starting rotation and he had his best season in 2005 when he went 18-4 with a 2.11 ERA and 218 strikeouts in 196.2 innings. He left the Hawks for the Giants as a free agent following the 2011 season. He threw a no-hitter against the Eagles in 2012. He injured his hip during the 2015 season and despite having surgery has never been able to make it back to the ichi-gun team. He has been named as one of the pitching coaches for the Giants farm team for 2019.

Sugiuchi was named Pacific League MVP in 2005. He lead the league in wins and winning percentage that year and led the league in strikeouts in 2008 and 2009. He also led the Central League in strikeouts in 2012. He won the Sawamura Award in 2005 and was named "Best Pitcher" in 2009 and 2010. He was named to the Best 9 team in 2005 and made the All Star team seven times (2005, 2007-12). He played in three Nippon Series (2003, 2011 and 2013) and was named MVP of the 2003 Series and won an "Outstanding Player Award" for the 2011 Series. (A shoulder injury prevented him from appearing in the 2012 Series.) He pitched for the Japan National Team on five different occasions - the 2000 and 2008 Olympics and the 2006, 2009 and 2013 World Baseball Classics.

Because he was still an amateur when he played in the 2000 Olympics, Sugiuchi is one of the rare players to have a "pre-rookie" card in Japan as he had a card in the 2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards set. His first BBM and Calbee cards were both from 2002 - card #235 in BBM's 1st Version set and card #N-14 in the "New Faces" subset from Calbee.

2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards #221

2002 BBM 1st Version #235

2003 BBM Nippon Series #55

2006 BBM 1st Version #433

2007 Hawks "Club Hawks" #110-RB-18

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #W09R097

2010 BBM All Stars #A36

2012 BBM No-Hitters #81

2015 Calbee #130

2018 BBM Giants #G06

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Kenji Yano

January 21, 2019, 6:13 pm

≫ Next: Tadashi Settsu

≪ Previous: Toshiya Sugiuchi

Fighters outfielder Kenji Yano retired at the end of last season. Yano was a sixth round pick of the Giants out of Kokugakuin University in the 2002 NPB draft. He was a regular outfielder for the Giants in 2006 but moved into a backup/pinch hitter role for 2007. Injuries cost him most of 2008-09 as he only got into 9 games with the ichi-gun team. Once healthy again in 2010 he resumed his backup role which is pretty much how he spent the remainder of his career. He set the Giants record for pinch hits in 2013 with 19. He was traded to the Fighters along with Hideki Sunaga midway through the 2015 season for Toshiyuki Yanuki and Atsushi Kita.

Yano got into two Nippon Series with the Giants, winning in 2012 against the Fighters but losing in 2013 against the Eagles (Masahiro Tanaka stuck him out to end Game Seven in the rain in Sendai). He was back on the winning side in the Nippon Series in 2016 with the Fighters.

His first BBM cards were #5 from the 2003 Rookie Edition set and #29 from the 2003 BBM 1st Version set. His first Calbee card was #210 from the 2005 set.