I'm off to Korea for Christmas and New Years for a bit of sightseeing. Just like my trip to Taiwan, I hope to find a card store and stock up on Korean baseball cards, and pick up a nice selection of team and league souvenirs too.
I need your help, though. What do you know about Korean baseball? Especially souvenirs and cards and where to get them?
I read somewhere that I could buy souvenirs for all the teams at the shared stadium in Seoul. Is this true?
Does anyone know about card stores in South Korea?
All information is welcome! I'll be hitting Google again but any first- or secondhand knowledge is greatly appreciated. Plus, it means I have more awesome stuff to trade and give away.
Just leave a comment below or send me an email. Thanks!
Korea has no yearly, mainstream set like Japan or Taiwan. Korean teams apparently don't issue their own sets each year. That about sums up my knowledge of Korean baseball cards. I've been digging, I just can't find anything more recent that the set of bootleg baseball trading card game cards that are making the rounds on eBay.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is a blog you might want to check out and see if you can contact the owner, as he has posted several times over the last few years about Korean cards:
http://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/
You may have to browse for awhile to find the card posts amid all the posts about basketball, Power Pangers and scale model cards, but here are a few highlights:
1998 Pro Baseball Stickers
http://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/30098633480
2007 Haitai Choco Homerun Ball Cards
http://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/30126159668
2010 Professional Baseball Card Game
http://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/30092812890
random older Teleca sets:
http://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/30111002410
http://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/30102291012
http://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/30101089144
I am with Jason. I went to Korea a couple years ago and found out that they don't release cards anymore. I couldn't find any at all. Cards were the one souvenir that I really wanted and I couldn't find any.
ReplyDeleteJason and Spankee: thanks for your input. I basically figured that cards aren't being released anymore, but I hope that I can find some card stores that might carry old sets (the Teleca sets, perhaps a team issue or some of these game cards).
ReplyDeleteIf there are any trading card stores (MLB/NBA/anything like that) in Seoul I could certainly swing by and do a little searching. If nothing else I might find a few MLB cards at good prices like I did in Taiwan.
And I plan on picking up some other souvenirs too, even if I find no cards. Spankee - what luck did you have finding any other souvenirs?
I ended up buying souvenirs at the Airport, unfortunately. Granted, I wasn't in Seoul for the majority, I was in Daejeon which is a lot less touristy. The main thing I wanted was a nice set of chopsticks, which I got at the airport.
ReplyDeletewhere I found cards were in small toy stores and book stores. Yes, except for the Teleca sets there is no uniformity! you have to search and ask. Clerks will say they don't have it but you may find it right under their noses. Many store clerks don't know their own inventory and/or are puzzled why an adult would want such a thing !
ReplyDeleteThat is how Japan was like pre-Calbee. Guys like Bud Ackerman, Mel Bailey, Pat Lafferty, Ed Broder and others found baseball cards in pre-Calbee Japan !
DeleteKiyoshi: Yeah, I'm afraid I'm going to miss out on cards because I won't have enough time to hunt through the used toy/book stores. If I come across any toy stores I'll be sure to check them out. I had a really tough time in Taiwan explaining what baseball cards were, so I might bring some examples or pictures of Korean cards.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing that, despite all the resources we have and the history of card collecting, finding cards outside of the US and Japan is quite tough, even of local issues. I do sometimes feel like the great pre-Calbee collectors though, looking in random toy shops and poking through bins to find odd menkos or team releases. I always keep my eyes open at the grocery store and conbini for freebies packaged with food.