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Subtle
I noticed something kind of interesting today - a number of players have the same menko number in two of the Marukami JCM14 sets - specifically the JCM14f set (from 1963) and the JCM14g set (from...
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Domination
I was thinking about trios of dominant managers the other day with Bobby Cox, Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre having been elected to the Hall of Fame last week. There was a trio of managers in Japan that...
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Card Of The Week December 15
If Hajime Matsuda, team owner, is worried about a player, he usually makes him the wallpaper for his mobile phone. His current wallpaper is Takeru Imamura. It was Kan Otake before that. Some players...
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Panini USA Baseball Japanese All Stars
I had mentioned a few weeks ago that Panini had included a set of memorabilia cards for the Japanese Collegiate National Team in their new USA Baseball box set that came out in November. I still...
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Action!
The majority of the menko cards that I've seen feature posed pictures of players. There are only a few that I've seen that feature actual game action, mostly from a couple of the late 1950's Doyusha...
View ArticleMore Sets For 2014
BBM announced three new sets this past week - the 2014 editions of a couple perennial sets and a somewhat expected new Anniversary set.- In late January, BBM will publish their annual box set...
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Card Of The Week December 22
The defending Nippon Series Champion Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles will lose at least one important team member to MLB this off season - third baseman Casey McGehee has signed a contract with the Miami...
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Shunsuke Watanabe Of The Boston Red Sox
Last week the World Champion Boston Red Sox (sorry, I just like the way that sounds :-)) signed former Chiba Lotte Marine pitcher Shunsuke Watanabe. Watanabe was drafted by the Marines in the fourth...
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Masahiro Tanaka
I'm not sure what to make of the Masahiro Tanaka situation. On the one hand, I fully understand Rakuten's reluctance to let him go for "only" $20 million, especially when they were not unreasonably...
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Card Of The Week December 29
The Yomiuri Giants have signed former Tampa Bay Ray farmhand Leslie Anderson to a one year deal for the 2014 season. Anderson is from Cuba originally and defected in 2009. While 2014 will be his first...
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2005 BBM 1st Version
2005 BBM 1st Version Set SummarySize: 559 cardsCards Per Team: 42 (team card, manager + 40 players)Team Card Theme: Game Action/CandidsNumber Of Leader Cards: 36Checklists: NoneSubsets: Retirement...
View Article2013 In Review - BBM
BBM did a whopping 50 sets in 2013, although in some ways what stands out this past year is what they didn't do for the first time ever. I believe that this is the most sets BBM has done in one year,...
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2013 In Review - Other Card Companies
I'm doing this a little out of order - I did BBM yesterday and I'll do Calbee later this week. I could be imagining things, but it seemed like there were a lot more card sets being done by outfits...
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2013 In Review - Calbee
Calbee Series One for sale at Yokohama StadiumAs they've done for a number of years, Calbee issued their cards in three series this past season. Each Series had a base set of roughly 100 cards, a 24...
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Card Of The Week January 5
I had mentioned yesterday that, for some reason, Calbee had felt the need to include a "regular' card of Kazuhiro Hatakeyama of the Swallows in each of their three Series in 2013. Here are all three...
View ArticleBlog Bat Around - Lost Cards
Ryan over at This Card Is Cool did post the other day on a "Blog Bat Around" topic proposed by the Lifetime Topps Project blog:“Lost Cards.” Every year card companies come out with different sets and...
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Card Of The Week January 12
In Ryan's Blog Bat Around post the other day, he mentioned that there was a Japanese Hall Of Famer named Shigeru Makino who apparently has not appeared on a card since 1981. I got really curious about...
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RIP BBM Nippon Series Set
Not only did BBM phase out their annual All Star box set last year but they also ended production of their annual Nippon Series set. This box set usually was released in mid-December to commemorate...
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RIP BBM All Star Set Part Three
I wanted to do one more quick post on the now-discontinued annual All Star box set from BBM. I had done some trivia in my post on the Nippon Series sets about who had appeared the most times in the...
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2014 Hall Of Fame Class
This year's Hall Of Fame inductees were announced today. There were three players elected from the Players Division - Koji Akiyama, Hideo Nomo and Kazuhiro Sasaki.To me at least, Nomo was a major...
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