Nagoya Card Shops 2014: Mint Ponyland

There are four card shops in Nagoya proper, a pretty good number for an often-forgotten city that happens to be the fourth largest metropolitan area in Japan. The Tokyo area has over a dozen (possibly nearly 20) shops but four seems to be about the max for the other regions.

Earlier this month, I spent my weekend in Nagoya and had a pretty good time running from small amusement park to small amusement park, and visiting a couple tourist attractions in the area. I made sure I had card stores on my itinerary and I managed to go to two of the four - one was closed for a short summer vacation and the other wasn't reachable in the time I had.

I've been to Mint Ponyland before, but I guess I need to change my opinion when I said it's the best store for singles. It is true that they have a ton of singles of mainstream BBM, Calbee, and the recent third-party releases (Frontier/Epoch/a couple of the CCGs) but I have yet to find a lot of true oddballs.

 Surprisingly, I needed a single from 2006 2nd Version for my type collection. I don't know how I missed that!

 There were some of the box set premium cards at decent prices.

 As I mentioned before, they have lots of idol cards. I found a few to share with you later, but it looks like they had a set or two of this Ayumi Kataoka release in singles form. I'd love to find a complete set at a good price some time! Again, be it baseball, soccer, wrestling, idol cards, or really anything BBM (or another major manufacturer) releases, this store will have a good selection of singles in stock. I am still trying to find inserts, though.

 There were still cards from the 2000 Upper Deck Olympic set but I only grabbed the "inserts" I needed. Someday I might find a box of the stuff or just a full set. I don't want to pay 50 yen per card to finish this set!

 There were a bunch of cards sitting on tables looking for a home. I think each of these Cooperstown inserts ran only 50 yen each, an acceptable price for singles for my MLB type collection.

For 100 yen each, I got two of the 2014 Diamond Kings jumbo box toppers and for 1000 yen I got two boxes worth of base and SP cards from 2014 Goodwin Champions. I've added the singles I need to my want list - if you have extra 2014 Goodwin Champions cards I'd like to try to trade or buy them from you.

Mint Ponyland is more than adequate when it comes to picking up singles from regular releases. I'd say it's the most organized card store I've seen in Japan and it has plenty of pleasant surprises. But I didn't see any old Calbees, insert cards, or a really good selection of autographs from NPB products. They could be hidden, and I am going to return sometime anyway!