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They're Here!
Topps' NPB set was released this past week and I've been seeing cards starting to show up on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and Twitter. I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to get the set but I thought I'd do a...
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Card Of The Week December 12
NPB will be announcing this season's award winners on Wednesday and I thought it'd be a good time to bring up something I noticed recently. Between 1961 and 1977 there were only three seasons in which...
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2021 Award Winners
NPB announced most of their major award winners this week. Munetaka Murakami of the Swallows and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Buffaloes won the MVP awards:2021 BBM 1st Version #3132021 BBM 1st Version...
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2021 BBM Tigers History 1935-2021
BBM published yet another OB team set in their "History" line back in late October. The subject of this one was the Hanshin Tigers and the set is entitled "Tigers History 1935-2021". It is the fifth...
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2021 BBM Buffaloes History 1936-2021
The sixth and most recent of BBM's "History" OB team sets was released a few weeks ago at the end of November. This time around the Buffaloes are the subject and the set is called "Buffaloes History...
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So Long And Thanks For All The Fish
The Chiba Lotte Marines are apparently retiring their mascot Nazo No Sakana, aka "The Mysterious Fish". I haven't been sure if this is real or a publicity stunt like the Swallows do every offseason...
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Card Of The Week December 19
Do you know who the only NPB player who wore a three digit number while on his team's 70 man roster was? It was Robinson Checo of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp who wore 106 in his first stint with the team...
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2021 BBM Legendary Rookies set
BBM issued the "Legendary Rookies" set back at the end of November. The set ostensibly celebrates great rookie seasons in NPB history although as usual it is skewed towards recent, living players who...
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Card Of The Week December 26
Big news out of the KBO last week - after 15 seasons, Son Ah-seop has left the Lotte Giants as a free agent and signed with the NC Dinos. Here's Son's earliest known baseball card - #SBC01-057 from...
View Article2021 In Review - BBM
2021 was a bit of a return to normalcy for BBM's baseball releases. They issued 30 sets in 2021, one more than they had in 2020. As always I'm going by the "cover date" of the set rather than the...
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Card Of The Week January 2
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I had the week between Christmas and New Year's off and decided to take advantage of the opportunity to do some long put off shifting of stuff in my house. Our...
View Article2021 In Review - Calbee
Calbee did their usual thing in 2021, issuing their flagship set in three separate Series. As Sean has pointed out to me in the past, the timing of the release of each series corresponded to the...
View Article2021 In Review - Epoch
2021 was another steady year for Epoch. They issued 25 sets which was the same as what they'd done in 2020. As usual their output was split between "reasonably" priced sets and "ultra high end"...
View Article2021 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)
I want to wrap up my review of the 2021 Japanese baseball card issues by going over every card release that wasn't from BBM, Calbee or Epoch.The big news this past year was that Topps got a license to...
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Card Of The Week January 9
Former Hiroshima Toyo Carp slugger Xavier Batista is returning to Asia - he signed a contract last week with the Fubon Guardians of the CPBL. Batista had been out of baseball for three years after...
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Yuhei
Back to the retirement posts finally...Yuhei Takai of the Swallows announced his retirement a few months back. Back in the early 00's Takai had been the top pitcher at Tohoku High School and drew...
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Shunsuke
Another retirement post for a mononymous player - this time it's Hanshin Tigers outfielder Shunsuke. Born Shunsuke Fujikawa, he was a star at Kinki University, winning five Best 9 awards and an MVP...
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Yoshiyuki Kamei
Another player who announced his retirement at the end of the season was Yoshiyuki Kamei of the Giants. Kamei been the Giants fourth round pick in the 2004 draft out of Chuo University where he had...
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2022 Hall Of Fame Class
The Japanese Hall Of Fame inductees for 2022 were announced today. There were two players elected on the Players Division ballot, Shingo Takatsu and Masahiro Yamamoto. They were the first players...
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Card Of The Week January 16th
I regularly read a Japanese blog about Calbee cards called "Calbee Card Institute" (or at least that's what Google translate calls it). A couple weeks back it had a post about a 1999 Star insert of...
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