I feel a bit bad for always stealing
NPB Card Guy's thunder. I do have the advantage of being in Japan, so I get the cards sooner than he does most of the time. But I try to provide something a bit different than him, and he is certainly more knowledgeable about the players and NPB's history.
I should post my monthly status report but this is a bit faster... and more interesting for you, I'm sure.
Today's set came out about a week ago, and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted it. There are 54 cards in the set.
The player cards are vertically aligned, with the player's name, jersey number, position, and the years he spent with the team at the bottom in a sort of "shield" shape. His name and the set logo in a top corner are in gold foil. Backs aren't exactly unique, and I don't care much for the placement of the stats. But since the cards are about their involvement in winning league titles or Japan Series championships the text seems to focus on that.
The last six cards in the set are horizontal and commemorate the Carp's League Championships and Japan Series victories. The backs have details on the team's season performance, record, and statistics, as well as playoff/Japan Series game-by-game results. All of the pictures are celebration pictures.
Each box includes the full set plus one autographed card. I am not sure if they're on card or sticker autographs, though I think they are on-card.
The cards look very attractive in person; I watched a few people open a couple boxes while I was at a store. Most of them are serial-numbered between 70 and 80 copies, though one player has only 10 copies. It appears that 46 players have authentic autographs in the product, which would represent all of the player cards in the base set except two.
Those two additional players have printed signatures. Both have 80 copies, and the cards are identified by the different notations on the back and behind the signature.
Hopefully I'll be able to find an autographed card of my own soon at a reasonable price. I'll be going out to the stores today to check out the several new releases that came out over the past week in Japan, so maybe I'll have some luck!
Don't feel bad - you post on a lot of sets and you don't always know which ones I'm going to post on (although you probably know me well enough to make some pretty good guesses). And you pay much more attention on parallels, inserts and memorabilia cards. I just try to bring up stuff you haven't mentioned. Plus I usually have the complete set so I can say more about what's in it.
ReplyDeleteDeanna Rubin used to beat me to posting about the Tokyo Big Six sets sometimes but that's stopped since she's not living in Japan anymore and they're not doing those sets anymore.
It looks to me that unlike the other recent Epoch sets, this one is not being done in conjunction with the All Japan Baseball Foundation/OB Club/Baseball Promotion Association/Whatever Their Name Is This Week. Does it look that way to you too?
Am I wrong in thinking Sachio Kinugasa is not in this set? That's kind of odd since he was in a couple of Epoch's earlier ones.
Now that I take a second look - I am wrong in thinking Kinugasa's not in the set. Stupid gold embossed lettering that doesn't show up in scans well...
ReplyDeleteI always look forward to your takes on the sets you get too.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, gold foil on black looks good in person but scans horribly! (See also: everything by Topps from the past 20 years...)