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2017 Bowman WBC Cards
Topps has issued their first World Baseball Classic cards that can be found in packs this past week. Last week Topps released the 2017 Bowman set. This set includes a 150 card "Paper Prospects"...
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Card Of The Week May 7
I picked up a couple interesting lots of cards off of Ebay recently. The bulk of the cards were 1970's era NST, Yamakatsu and Takara cards but there were a couple older items also. What I found the...
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2013 Giants Players Card
I picked up an interesting item in a lot of cards I got on Ebay recently. It's a Giants team issued card from 2013 that features Tetsuya Matsumoto on one side and Ryota Wakiya on the other, making it...
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2005 Calbee Title Holder Special Box Set
I picked up an odd little set off of Ebay a couple weeks ago. It's a box set containing the "Title Holder" cards from the 2005 Calbee Series One set. I'm not completely sure on this but I'm assuming...
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Card Of The Week May 14
For the second time this season the Tokyo Yakult Swallows today won a game on a walk off grand slam. The first time was back on April 2nd when Atsushi Ugumori beat the Baystars in the bottom of the...
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RIP SCM
I'm getting around to this kind of late but it looks like BBM has decided to stop publishing Sports Card Magazine. Issue #121 which came out at the end of January was apparently the last issue.A...
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Card Of The Week May 21
The Kintetsu Buffaloes were not one of the more successful NPB franchises over their 55 season lifespan (from 1950 to 2004). They didn't finish higher than fourth until their 20th season (1969) and...
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A Bowman Shohei Ohtani Card?
I got a comment this morning on my post about the 2017 Bowman WBC cards from a reader named "Drec" who said that his son had pulled "the Shohei Ohtani purple mega refractor" from a pack of Bowman...
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Blue, Gold And Fade To Black
The company that's been issuing cards for the KBO for the past three years (SMG/Duael/Ntreev) has issued card sets in the off season each year - the Blue Edition was issued in 2014-15, the Gold Edition...
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Study Abroad Program - The San Francisco Giants Organization In The 60's & 70's
One of the things I've been fascinated by over the years is when Japanese players have come to North America to play in minor leagues (such as the Seibu Lions players who played for San Jose in the...
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Card Of The Week May 28
Takahiro Norimoto of the Eagles struck out 10 Buffaloes last Thursday en route to a 4-1 victory. It was his sixth consecutive start in which he recorded at least 10 strikeouts - that ties him for the...
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Gail Hopkins
Last weekend's episode of NPR's show "Only A Game" featured a segment on Gail Hopkins, who spent three years in NPB in the mid 1970's. I thought I'd do a quick summary of what Japanese cards exist for...
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Card Of The Week June 4
This card is #26 from the 2002 BBM "The Legend Of Hideki Matsui" set. I think it has something to do with Matsui's high school graduation but I'm not positive. I'm going to use it anyway to...
View ArticleA Bunch Of New Stuff
Here's a quick roundup of some upcoming releases:- BBM has announced three more of their pack based team sets - the Buffaloes, the Baystars and the Fighters. Each set has an 81 card base set. The...
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Masahiro Araki
Masahiro Araki of the Dragons got his 2000th career hit on Saturday. Araki was the first round pick for Chunichi in the fall 1995 draft and has been with the Dragons his entire career. He debuted...
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Hector Mendoza of the St Louis Cardinals
The St Louis Cardinals have signed former Yomiuri Giant Hector Mendoza to a minor league contract. Mendoza is Cuban and was one of four players that the Cuban government let play in Japan in 2014....
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More Memories Of Uniform - Everybody Else Edition
There are a handful of teams in Japanese professional baseball history that longer exist. Many of these teams "merged" into other teams but some merely folded. The BBM Memories Of Uniform set really...
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Card Of The Week June 11
The Giants ended their franchise record 13 game losing streak on Friday by defeating the Fighters 2-1. Miles Mikolas pitched 8 innings, giving up one run on five hits and striking out 10 while Scott...
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Study Abroad Program - Lodi
The first book on Japanese baseball published in the US was Robert Obojski's "The Rise Of Japanese Baseball Power". Published in 1975, it's an interesting book dealing with many aspects of the game in...
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Card Of The Week June 18
Shun Yamaguchi left the Yokohama DeNA Baystars last winter as a free agent and signed with the Yomiuri Giants. He had some shoulder issues that had delayed him from making a start with the ichi-gun...
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