Recent Ebay Pickups

Like the other time I got a "Printing Plate" card, I thought I should get the card it went with so I ended up buying it from the same guy I had bought my first "Printing Plate" from (along with a bunch of other fun stuff).  That card showed up in the mail today:

That wasn't the only thing I bought from that particular seller.  I had noticed recently that Alen Hanson of the Fighters didn't have any cards this year other than a couple of Epoch One cards and an autographed card in BBM's 2nd Version set.  The seller had the autographed card at a pretty good price so I picked that up as well:

But wait, there's more!  The seller included a couple other cards - none of which I already had!  Here are the cards:

I had thought about picking up the Okoshi card last year when the Infinity set came out since the I find the inclusion of non-NPB baseball players in their multi-sport sets very appealing.  Okoshi had played baseball at Tokyo University but never went pro.  He instead became a journalist, mostly covering politics for NHK.  He also appeared in the 2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo big Six set.

The last item was another item that arrived in the mail today, although from a different seller.  The Bowamn NPB set came out a few weeks ago.  After briefly considering it, I decided against buying a complete set and instead I'll just pick up a handful of singles when I get an opportunity.  One of the insert sets for the Bowman set reuses the 1989 Bowman design - albeit with a shiny "chrome' finish.  Ryan has already picked up the Takeya Nakamura card from this insert set for me but I couldn't resist grabbing the Munetaka Murakami one also:

The backs show the same level of effort that we've come to expect from Topps with their NPB products: