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Card Of The Week June 3
The Australian Baseball League is going through a bunch of changes this year. One thing that is going on is that they are shifting from having the league own all six teams to having independent...
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Fighters Cards
Ryan's job takes him to different areas of Japan for short periods of time and he spent some time late last year up in Sapporo, home of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. I had noticed that the...
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2018 BBM Icons - Fanfare
This year's edition of BBM's annual Icons box set is called "Fanfare". Its theme appears to be players who were considered a big deal when they were drafted. All the players in the set were taken in...
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Shukan Baseball Cards
A couple of years ago (about a year after I got serious about learning about Sports Card Magazine and the baseball cards distributed with issues of it) I started looking into the baseball cards that...
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Bobby Rose
Last season Justin mentioned to me that former Yokohama Baystars star Bobby Rose was the batting coach for the Down East Wood Ducks of the Carolina League. As I've mentioned before I'm not a big...
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Card Of The Week June 10
In my post about Bobby Rose I mentioned that he had 153 RBIs in 1999 and that was the second best total for a season in NPB history. Do you know who had the most RBIs in a season in NPB history? It's...
View ArticleLots Of New Releases
There's a bunch of sets that have been announced recently so let's get to it...- The final three of BBM's annual "comprehensive" team sets have been announced. The Hawks set will be out in late June...
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Card Of The Week June 17
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles manager Masataka Nashida announced a couple days ago that he's stepping down due to the team's poor performance this season. The team announced that head coach Yosuke...
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Interleague Home Runs By Pitchers
NPB on Reddit (@NPB_Reddit) sent out a really interesting tweet this morning - in the 14 years since interleague play began seven Pacific League pitchers have hit home runs during the interleague games...
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Card Of The Week June 24
Inter-league play wrapped up last week and the Swallows were the surprise inter-league "Champions". It was the first time a Central League team had the best record during inter-league since the Giants...
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2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version Set - Where Are They Now?
I mention from time to time that there's very few opportunities for "pre-rookie" cards in Japan. This has to do with the way NPB teams structure their rosters and run their farm team. Think about the...
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Shota Ohmine
Really odd story last week - Chiba Lotte Marines infielder Shota Ohmine announced he was retiring at age 26 due to financial issues. He reportedly owes a lot of money - although none of it for doing...
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2018 Epoch NPB set
I was excited a few months ago when I heard that Epoch was going to be releasing a full flagship set in late May. I figured that even if the set wasn't all that good it would still put pressure on BBM...
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Card Of The Week July 1
The Lions were having a rough series against the Eagles this weekend. Friday night the Eagles clobbered them 15-1 in a game in which Rakuten starter Takahiro Shiomi didn't give up a hit until the...
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Study Abroad - Yomiuri, Miami and Visalia
The Yomiuri Giants were another team that sent players to play in the North American minor leagues in the 1980's. The Giants sent a total of 13 players over between 1987 and 1989. The first two years...
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Card Of The Week July 8
Haven't done an Ohtani card for a while so I thought I'd share one to celebrate his return from the disabled list last week. Unfortunately for me he returned two games after I saw the Angels in...
View ArticleSummer Releases
There's been several new sets announced recently -- The second of BBM's two annual cheerleader/dance squad sets - "Dancing Heroine - Mai" - will be out by the end of the month (Jambalaya's calendar...
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Card Of The Week July 15
It was All Star Weekend the past couple days when NPB put on their All Star games. Thursday was the Fresh All-Star Game which is the All Star game for the farm teams. Friday and Saturday were the...
View ArticleNew Vintage Price Guide Available
The latest edition of Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist & Price Guide" is now available. This is the Second Vintage Edition and covers baseball cards from 1929 to 1990. This edition...
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2017* SCC KBO Set
In April of this year a company called SCC (Sports Collector Card) issued the first official KBO set since the 2016-17 Black Edition set from SMG/Ntreev Duael back in early 2017. Despite the set being...
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