Parallel Universe
I wanted to mention that commenter Ryan Laughton has started a blog about Japanese sumo cards. There are a lot of parallels between vintage sumo cards and vintage baseball cards in Japan so I expect...
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2015 BBM Team Sets
I did something last year that I've never done before - I decided to get all of the pack based team sets that BBM issues for the 12 NPB teams. I felt that the flagship BBM sets were simply leaving too...
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Card Of The Week January 10
I saw an Ebay auction a couple weeks back offering a couple 1977 NST cards of "Cleon Jones". I hadn't remembered that Cleon Jones had played in Japan but I been surprised before to discover someone...
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2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories
The 2016 edition of BBM's annual "Historic Collection" set was released back at the end of November. This year's theme is "The Ballpark Stories" and it appears that each card commemorates an event...
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2016 BBM Dragons 80th Anniversary
The Chunichi Dragons are celebrating their 80th Anniversary in 2016 and like the Giants in 2014 and the Tigers last year, BBM has issued a baseball card set to commemorate the milestone. BBM had...
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New Stuff
Some new sets that have either just been released or are coming out soon.Let's start with BBM. They have two sets coming out in the next few weeks. On January 29th they will be releasing the annual...
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Card Of The Week January 17
The Meikyukai held a baseball game at Fukuoka Dome* on January 1st. NPB Reddit tweeted out a link to a video of the ceremonial first pitch of the game - Sadaharu Oh pitching to Shigeo Nagashima (with...
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Seung-Hwan Oh of the St Louis Cardinals
Last week the Cardinals signed former Samsung Lions and Hanshin Tigers closer Seung-Hwan Oh to a one year contract. Oh spent nine years in Korea with Samsung before moving to NPB and the Tigers in...
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2016 Hall Of Fame Class
The new Hall Of Fame inductees were announced today. Former Giants pitcher Masaki Saitoh and former Lions, Hawks, Giants and Baystars pitcher Kimiyasu Kudoh were both elected in the "Players Division"...
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More Memories Of Uniform - Fighters Edition
I really hadn't intended to take a six month break from doing these posts but life and work have been keeping me pretty busy lately (and 22 retiring players that I felt were worth doing posts on kept...
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Card Of The Week January 24
Spent the day digging out from a record snow fall. Makes me think of warm places like this:2004 BBM Tigers #T95Not sure of where or when this is - I figure it's somewhere in Arizona during the 1980's.
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Spring Training In Arizona
There has been a lot of speculation over the last few years about when Shohei Ohtani will be coming to North America. I can answer that question - he's coming this week! Of course, he's going back to...
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Card Of The Week January 31
Hey everybody, let's hike up our pants...Kimiyasu Kudoh has gotten into the spirit of things:1988 JBR 22
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Card Of The Week February 7
Kenta Maeda has an elaborate stretching routine that he does both before games and between innings. It's called the MaeKen Taiso:It is well known enough that it gets copied by mascots:as well as other...
View ArticleFour New Sets From Four Different Companies
A couple new sets have been announced recently from a couple different companies.- BBM is releasing their annual Rookie Edition set next week. This is a pack based set that has 129 cards in the base...
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Sports Card Magazine #115
I'm home after over two weeks in Arizona and of course I'm way behind on everything. I've got a bunch of posts that I'd like to do in the next few days (including some items from Arizona - one of...
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Two Days In Peoria
As I've mentioned before, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters are doing their "winter camp" in Peoria, Arizona for the past two weeks at the Padres spring training complex. They will wrap everything up...
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Card Of The Week February 14
The first qualifier for the 2017 World Baseball Classic was held over the last few days with Australia coming out on top of South Africa, New Zealand and the Philippines to earn a spot in next year's...
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Dae-Ho Lee of the Seattle Mariners
Continuing to catch up on things that happened while I was gone...Former Lotte Giant, Orix Buffalo and Fukuoka Softbank Hawk Dae-Ho Lee signed a minor league deal with the Mariners a couple weeks back....
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Teppei Tsuchiya
Former Dragon, Eagle and Buffalo Teppei Tsuchiya announced his retirement a few weeks back. He was originally drafted by the Dragons in the fifth round of the fall 2000 draft out of Oita Prefectural...
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