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Card Of The Week January 5
I was doing some research this past week and I unexpectedly came across something interesting that was completely unrelated to what I was researching. I have often pointed out that the Yomiuri Giants...
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Best 9 and Golden Glove Award Cards In BBM Sets
Among the post-season awards that NPB issues are the Best 9 and Golden Glove awards. The Golden Glove awards are basically their version of the MLB Gold Glove awards - they're issued to the player at...
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Your Hit Parade
2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #014I noticed something interesting recently when I was researching the "Untouchable Records" subset from the 1995 BBM set. In 1994, Ichiro got 210 hits, shattering Fujio...
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Card Of The Week January 12
When I made my announcement recently that I was not going to continue to buy new baseball cards anymore, only things on my want list, I got a comment from Scott Kaneko. Scott had taken a look at the...
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2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB
I make fun of Topps' NPB offerings a lot here and with pretty good reason. I feel like Topps is pretty lazy and/or sloppy with their Japanese products, especially in comparison with BBM's sets. I was...
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2025 Hall Of Fame Class
The Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame announced its 2025 inductees today, and, to no one's real surprise, Ichiro Suzuki was elected in his first year of eligibility. He is joined by three others - long...
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Roki Sasaki of the Los Angeles Dodgers
To the surprise of no one, yesterday former Chiba Lotte Marines picher Roki Sasaki announced that he had signed with the Dodgers. Normally in a post like this, I'd be writing a mini-bio of the player...
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Card Of The Week January 19
Roki Sasaki wasn't the only Japanese pitcher whose signing was announced on Friday - Shintaro Fujinami, formerly of the Hanshin Tigers, inked a minor league deal with the Seattle Mariners. Fujinami...
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Koyo Aoyagi Of The Philadelphia Phillies
A third former NPB pitcher also found a home for the 2025 season last Friday. In addition to Sasaki and Fujinami, former Tigers pitcher Koyo Aoyagi signed a minor league deal with the Phillies.The...
View ArticleMore 2025 Sets
There's been a couple new sets announced in the past few weeks so let's get caught up...- I swear to God that both BBM and Epoch are going out of their ways to tempt me back into buying new sets....
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Shinnosuke Ogasawara Of The Washington Nationals
The Washington Nationals have signed former Chunichi Dragons pitcher Shinnosuke Ogasawara to a two year contract. Ogasawara is the fourth and final Japanese pitcher to sign with an MLB team this off...
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Card Of The Week January 26
The Orix Buffaloes announced this past week that they were inviting Jarryd Dale of the Melbourne Aces (and veteran of six seasons in the San Diego Padres organization) to join them for spring training...
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Mail Day From Jason!
Got a package in the mail from my friend Jason today that contained a bunch of goodies, most of which were from the Topps Chrome and 206 sets that were released last month. I'll be doing posts about...
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2024 Topps Chrome NPB
Among the cards I got from my friend Jason yesterday were a bunch from the 2024 Topps Chrome NPB set that was released last month. Like the 2023 version of this set, this is not simply an ugly chrome...
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2024 Topps 206 NPB
There are many things that are popular for absolutely no reason that I can understand. I won't list them here as, for the most part, I don't care if other people like things that I don't like. I...
View ArticleUnexpected Calbee Set and 2025 Epoch Ones
Training camps are opening in Japan tomorrow (well, pretty much as I write this in the evening of January 31st on the US East Coast) and there's a couple new items that have popped up in the last day...
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Card Of The Week February 2
One of the things that was noted with some of the reporting about Shinnosuke Ogasawara signing with the Nats was that it was the first time that Washington had signed a Japanese pitcher. That's not...
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Who Are The Japan Breeze?
The 2025 Caribbean Series started the other day and there's an unusual team playing in it. For the first time ever, a team from Japan is taking part. Unlike the other teams in the tournament,...
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RIP Yoshio Yoshida
Hall Of Famer Yoshio Yoshida passed away yesterday at age 91. Yoshida was perhaps the greatest shortstop in NPB history. He joined the then-Osaka Tigers as a 19 year old in 1953 after dropping out of...
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Zippy Zapped Again!
I was greeted upon my return home from work one day last week with a package from Kenny - aka Zippy Zappy I've been the beneficiary of Kenny's generosity a number of times over the past few years and...
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