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2013 BBM Rookie Edition
I'm going to interrupt the posts on my trip again and talk about the 2013 BBM Rookie Edition set. With it being Opening Weekend and all, a lot of the big rookies have been making their debuts. Shohei...
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Card Of The Week March 31
The Giants beat the Carp today in extra innings with a Sayonara single by Shinnosuke Abe scoring Hisayoshi Chono in the bottom of the eleventh. Helping to set up the winning run was a double by Ryota...
View ArticleBig News From Calbee
There was a big announcement released from Calbee today. I'll quote from Calbee spokeswoman Eipuriru Furu's statement:For the last several years, Calbee has been making their subsets more and more...
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Alex Ramirez
Alex Ramirez homered for the Baystars at Jingu Stadium today for his 2000th career hit in Japan. Ramirez is the first foreign player to reach this milestone exclusively in Japan. It's kind of neat...
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Card Shops In Japan - Part Three
Biblio, JinbochoJinbocho is neighborhood in Tokyo's Chiyoda ward that is world renown for it's bookstores. On the corner of a couple unnamed streets here is a small bookstore called Biblio that's...
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Card Of The Week April 7
Well, it's taken me nine years, but I have finally completed the 2004 BBM 1st Version set. When I arrived in Tokyo a month ago, I needed 110 cards of the 440 card set. (I actually considered looking...
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Card Shops In Japan - Part Four
Mint Yokohama, YokohamaThe final store I went to in Japan was Mint's store in Yokohama. This store is located on the second floor of a building about four or five blocks north of Yokohama station. I...
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RIP Takumi Ohtomo
Former Yomiuri Giants and Kintetsu Buffaloes pitcher Takumi Ohtomo has passed away at age 88. Ohtomo played for the Giants from 1950 until 1959, then spent 1960 with the Buffaloes.I've got a couple of...
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Card Of The Week April 14
This week I thought I'd show off some more cards I picked up in Japan. There's a couple years that I don't have many Calbee cards from, so I wanted to add some cards from those years. Luckily,...
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Opened Box Sets
I wanted to briefly talk about the eight opened box sets that I bought while in Japan. The original, unopened sets have the possibility of containing some form of memorabilia or autograph card. So...
View ArticleNews of new things
Some new items of interest:BBM has released information on a boatload of sets in the last couple weeks. They've announced this year's team sets for the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Giants and Marines....
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Takahiro Matsuka Of The Gary SouthShore RailCats
The Gary SouthShore RailCats of the independent American Association announced that they signed former Baystar and Fighter pitcher Takahiro Matsuka. Matsuka was taken in the ninth(!) round of the 2005...
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Card Of The Week April 21
On Thursday Dragons closer Hitoki Iwase notched his 350th career save. When asked by a reporter what was next, he said "number 351".Here's a card celebrating his 250th save, slightly less than three...
View ArticlePrestige Collectibles Auction #43
The latest Prestige Collectibles Auction is running from now until May 7. As always, lots of cool vintage stuff available.
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Tokyo Big Six Perfect Games
Deanna Rubin had a post up the other day talking about a perfect game thrown last Sunday (the 21st) in the Tokyo Big Six collegiate baseball league by Yuhei Takanashi of Waseda against perennially...
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Card Of The Week April 28
Tomonori Maeda of the Carp was hit by a pitch last week from Masaya Emura and broke his wrist. He had surgery on Thursday and will likely be out for three months. Maeda is 41 and there may be some...
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RIP Animal
Brad "Animal" Lesley passed away last Saturday from kidney failure at age 54. Lesley spent two years playing in Japan (1986-87 for the Hankyu Braves) and then spent a number of years as a character in...
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Card Of The Week May 5
The big event in Japanese baseball today was the pre-game ceremony at the Tokyo Dome honoring Hideki Matsui and Shigeo Nagashima. It was both a retirement ceremony for Matsui and also an awards...
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Norihiro Nakamura
It's probably not getting the press it deserves today given the Matsui/Nagashima event but another piece of baseball history occurred today - Norihiro Nakamura of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars notched his...
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Other Sets
I wanted to talk briefly about a couple other sets I picked up in Japan. There were three older sets that I bought, so they didn't really fit in with the post I did a few weeks back about the opened...
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