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2024 BBM Hawks - Fly Again
I meant to mention when I did my post about the new Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary set the other day that I had gotten a shipment from ZenMarket earlier this week with several new BBM sets in...
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Card Of The Week December 14
I find visits to North America by NPB players and teams to be endlessly fascinating. These visits typically manifest themselves in two ways - NPB teams loaning players to MLB (and independent) teams...
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2024 BBM Lions Collection
Last summer, the Lions rolled out an alternate uniform that they collaborated with the Japanese fashion line "New Yorker". For the three game series against the Marines from July 5th to July 7th, the...
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Tomoyuki Sugano of the Baltimore Orioles
The Orioles announced yesterday that they'd signed former Yomiuri Giants pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano to a one year contract for $13 million. Sugano had attended Tokai University where he went 37-4 with an...
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An Answer
I did a post the other day wondering if the card below featured a photo taken in Arizona:2024 BBM Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary #130The photo shows Michiyo Arito and Hiroyuki Yamazaki of the...
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2024 BBM Fusion
2024 BBM Fusion Set SummarySize: 144 cards numbered 1-99, TH01-TH24, 601-620, 136Cards Per Team: VariableTeam Card Theme: N/ANumber Of Leader Cards: 24Checklists: NoneSubsets: Title Holder (24),...
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Card Of The Week December 22
With the tragic news of Rickey Henderson's passing this past week, I got to thinking about Yutaka Fukumoto. I was a big Lou Brock fan when I was a kid so I've kind of naturally been attracted to base...
View ArticleFirst Sets Of 2025
The first three sets of the new year have been announced so let's do a quick overview of them...- Ichiro Suzuki retired in 2019 but apparently missed the game enough that he founded a club baseball...
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Seiya Inoue
Seiya Inoue, the somewhat rotund slugger from the Chiba Lotte Marines, announced his retirement back at the beginning of October. Inoue had been a bit of star at Chuo University but decided to play...
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Takumi Akiyama
Long time Hanshin Tigers pitcher Takumi Akiyama announced his retirement back in the middle of September. Akiyama had been the star player on his Saijo High School squad and led them to the Summer...
View Article2024 In Review - BBM
2024 was kind of a mundane year with very little difference with what they did in 2023. Like 2023, they issued 27 baseball (or primarily baseball) sets this year.The bulk of BBM's 2024 releases - 24...
View Article2024 In Review - Epoch
Epoch's 2024 output was kind of like BBM's - a little on the mundane side with no real surprises. They only put out 19 sets which was two fewer than 2023. One of those 19, however, was a set with a...
View Article2024 In Review - Calbee
Like BBM and Epoch, Calbee pretty much did the same thing in 2024 that they did in 2023. Unfortunately.Starting in 2004, Calbee had released three Series each year. Series One would come out in...
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Card Of The Week December 29
I mentioned when I did my post about the new BBM Fusion set that Gakuto Wakabayashi, who'd been traded from the Lions to the Giants in late June, had appeared in BBM's 2nd Version as a Lion but was a...
View Article2024 In Review - Topps
2024 was Topps' fourth year of doing NPB cards and they ended up publishing four sets. Eventually. Topps had been steadily adding a set a year for their first three years. They published "NPB" and...
View Article2024 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)
I'm finishing up the review of 2024's card releases in Japan (and Korea) with everything that wasn't done by BBM, Epoch, Calbee or Topps.The big addition this year was a collectible card game called...
View Article20 Years Of OB Team Sets
I realized the other day that I was about to let 2024 pass without commemorating the 20th anniversary of that staple of BBM's card issues - the OB team set. BBM released the first of these in 2004 to...
View ArticleSome News For The New Year
I've been wracking my brain, trying to come up with a clever way to come out and say something, but I think I'm just going to have to go ahead and say it.2024 was the last year that I'll be buying...
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Untouchable Records
The 1995 BBM "flagship" set contained a ten card subset entitled "Untouchable Records". These cards commemorated ten NPB records - nine career and one single season - that the publishers of the set...
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Kim Hye-seong of the Los Angeles Dodgers
Former Nexen/Kiwoom Heroes infielder Kim Hye-seong signed a three year deal with the Dodgers yesterday, a few hours before his posting was going to expire. Kim was drafted out of high school in the...
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