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Card Of The Week June 14
I noticed something odd the other day about the recent Calbee sets. It's not unusual in a given year for a player to appear in one (or more) of Calbee's subsets but not actually appear on a "regular"...
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Play Ball! (2020)
I'm continuing my Opening Day tradition of doing a post showing a baseball card from the last year that each of the 12 NPB teams won the Nippon Series - inspired by the series of posts that Night Owl...
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Latest Mandarake Mail Day
Recently I placed yet another order for vintage Calbee cards from Mandarake, the chain of antique toy stores in Japan that ships to the US and the cards showed up today. As usual I'm astonished by how...
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Card Of The Week June 21
One of the likely outcomes of the current negotiations between MLB and the player's association will be the adoption of the Designated Hitter in the National League. While this officially will be...
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2004 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team
The Sydney Olympics, the first Olympics to allow the use of professional baseball players, was an embarrassment for Japan. The country with the second highest professional league in the world came in...
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Card Of The Week June 28
This past week was not a good one for the Orix Buffaloes.The Pacific League is trying to cut back on travel this season and is having teams play six game Series, at least for the next couple months....
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Issei Baseball
I wanted to do a quick post about Rob Fitts' latest book which was published a few months back. It's called "Issei Baseball" and it's the story of some of the first Japanese immigrants to play...
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2009 World Baseball Classic Roundup - Relics
The posts I've done in the past for the 2009 World Baseball Classic cards available for the Japanese and Korean teams didn't include much detail on the memorabilia cards for the teams that Topps...
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Card Of The Week July 5
Yushi Aida spent four seasons pitching for the Yomiuri Giants from 2006 to 2009. He worked out of the bullpen but never recorded a save. Until, that is, last week when Aida, who is now the pitching...
View ArticleMore Summer Releases
I wanted to do a quick post about some recent set announcements along with a quick discussion about what hasn't been announced yet.- 2020 marks the 30th year that BBM has been publishing baseball cards...
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Card Of The Week July 12
Last Friday was the first day that fans were allowed into the ballparks in Japan. The teams are limiting the crowds to no more than 5000 people with plans to go to half capacity on August 1st...
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2020 Epoch NPB set
For the third year in a row Epoch has issued a "flagship" set called "NPB". The set came out towards the end of May but I just received it last week. I had purchased the set when it came out through...
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2020 Calbee Series Two
Series Two, the second of the expected three Series of Calbee sets this year, was released just about two weeks ago. It was a slightly later release than usual - early July instead of late June - but...
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NPB Down Under Part 3
I've got a small collection of Australian baseball cards. I've got the set Choice did for the Australian Baseball League (ABL) in 2018/19 but most of my cards are scattered singles of Japanese players...
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Card Of The Week July 19
Last Tuesday the Giants beat the Carp 7-2. It was Tatsunori Hara's 1035th victory as manager of the Giants, pushing him past Shigeo Nagashima for solo possession of second place for most victories in...
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Junichi Tazawa, Japanese Players Starting Their Careers In The US And The Draft
Former Red Sox pitcher Junichi Tazawa was in the news recently after he signed a deal to play for the Saitama Musashi Heat Bears of the independent Baseball Challenge (BC) League. Tazawa had been a...
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Card Of The Week July 26
There's been a couple fun events in the past few days and I couldn't decide which one to feature today so I decided to do all of them...Friday night in Yokohama the Carp had a 6-4 lead over the...
View ArticleDelayed Perennials And Other Items
It's time for a quick round up of some recently announced sets including two of BBM's perennial sets that had their release dates pushed back a few months.- First the big new - BBM's 2nd Version set...
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2008 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team
On July 7, 2005, the International Olympic Committee voted to remove baseball and softball from the program for the 2012 London Olympics. They did this basically due to frustration that despite the...
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Card Of The Week August 2
There was a wild game in Chiba last Tuesday night. The Marines took on the visiting Eagles and jumped out to a 6-1 lead after three innings, Half of those six runs scored on a pair of home runs by...
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