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History Of Calbee Part 8 - 2010 to 2015
As they entered the second decade of the 21st century, Calbee continued the pattern that they had been doing since 2004. The sets were issued in three separate Series that contained roughly the same...
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Masataka Yoshida of the Boston Red Sox
Masataka Yoshida, formerly of the 2022 Nippon Series champion Orix Buffaloes, has signed a five year contract with the Boston Red Sox after Orix posted him this week.  Yoshida was the Buffaloes first...
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RIP Shigeru Fujio
Former Yomiuri Giants catcher Shigeru Fujio has passed away. The team announced Fujio's passing today but it actually happened two months ago on October 8th, Fujio's 88th birthday.  Fujio spent 13...
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Card Of The Week December 11
I ran into a bit of problem a couple weeks ago when I was putting together my post for the 2022 NPB Award winners. I wanted to use cards from Epoch's NPB set for the Best 9 award winners but for...
View ArticleAnother Samurai Japan Set And The First 2023 Set (Kind Of)
I wanted to do a quick post about a couple of sets that were announced this past weekend.- Topps Japan is releasing more on-line, on-demand cards for the Samurai Japan team that played two friendlies...
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Kodai Senga of the New York Mets
After many years of rumors, former Fukuoka Softbank Hawks pitcher Kodai Senga is finally coming to MLB after signing a five year contract with the New York Mets last weekend. I believe that Senga will...
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Card Of The Week December 18
I picked up my first ever "1 of 1" card this week - this Yuya Gunji "Japanese Collegiate All Stars Silhouettes Signatures Jerseys Brand Logo Asics" card from the 2020 Panini USA Baseball Stars &...
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2022 BBM Fusion
 2022 BBM Fusion Set SummarySize: 144 cards numbered 1-99, TH01-TH24, 601-620, 88Cards Per Team:  VariableTeam Card Theme:  N/ANumber Of Leader Cards:  24Checklists:  NoneSubsets: 1st Version Update...
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Card Of The Week December 25
There have been two NPB players with the name "Koichi Ogata". The older of the two of them was born on September 2nd, 1968 and played for the Giants for the 12 years between 1987 and 1998. He's also...
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History Of Calbee Part 9 - 2016 to 2022
In recent years Calbee's flagship sets have pretty much continued the same pattern of being issued in three Series with roughly the same number of cards. The total number of cards in the base sets is...
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Topps Now Samurai Japan cards
Back in November Topps Japan put a group of "Topps Now" cards up for sale for some members of the Samurai Japan team that played two friendly matches against Team Australia. There were 16 total cards...
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Card Of The Week January 1
I wanted to share a recent pickup this week. There were some pretty wild die-cut menko cards produced in the 1940's including ones cut in the shape of airplanes, kites and masks. I'd always wanted to...
View Article2022 In Review - BBM
BBM issued 30 sets in 2022, the same as they did in 2021. As always I'm going by the "cover date" of the cards rather than the date of release so the "publication year" of 2022 covers cards issued in...
View Article2022 In Review - Calbee
Calbee celebrated their 50th year of publishing baseball cards by pretty much doing what they've been doing every year since 2004. They issued their flagship set in their usual three Series in 2022...
View Article2022 In Review - Epoch
2022 was a year of change for Epoch. They issued 20 sets - although one of those technically a delayed 2021 set - which was five fewer than each of the previous two years. There were some changes in...
View Article2022 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)
Time to finish up the reviews of the 2022 releases by covering everything that wasn't done by BBM, Calbee or Epoch...Topps was back for the second year of producing NPB sets and had four releases in...
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Topps Now Samurai Japan Parallels
I had a surprise waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday - two packages from Topps. I had no idea what these were as I had received all 16 of the Topps Now Samurai Japan cards from Topps a...
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Card Of The Week January 8
After two years with the Texas Rangers, Kohei Arihara is returning to Japan. The former Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters pitcher signed a deal this past week with the team at the far end of Japan from...
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Cards From Suruga-ya
I recently came across another on-line Japanese store that I could order baseball cards from - Suruga-ya. They seem to have a fairly extensive collection of baseball cards at reasonable prices. I...
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2023 Hall Of Fame Class
The 2023 Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame inductees were announced today. Each of the Hall's three voting divisions elected someone with former Swallows, Giants and Baystars player (as well as former...
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