Oh, Ichiro! Chono, Ohno, Asuka! Gibberish? Maybe Not.

A couple of my goals for the year are actually tied together - I really want to finish my 2000 Calbee set, and I want to get my Japanese set want list down to 125 or even 100. And that 2000 Calbee set is on the set want list, so, two birds, one stone, right?

Well, time is short this week, so here are cards that work toward one or both of those goals!

Oh, Ichiro! I've talked about the toughness of finding Calbee checklists at decent prices. Here's one down. Five to go! Plus 16 other "insert" cards and the entire second series... And that's Nagashima, not Oh. But it's from the Oh-Nagashima (ON) set from 2000.

 If you search back to about May/June of 2016, I was featured on a Japanese TV show for my collection. I still haven't watched the episode, but I did end up with a few dozen Calbee cards. Definitely not a set, and I still need a bunch of the premium inserts.

 These eight leave me needing eight more Starcards (all from Series 1). And four more Legends cards.

 Then, you can tack on all of the First Win (12) and Exciting Scene (12) inserts, nine checklists (WHY!), and six Titleholder inserts. Doable, I suppose... I just have to start looking.

 I did finish a few sets with this group, including two Evangelion sets! The card on the left is from one of the first Eva releases, while the right card is a Calbee card from a more-recent release.

 These three cards are from the many Evangelion Wafers series issued over the years. Bandai issued these plastic cards packaged with chocolate wafers, similar to the ones you find with Bikkuriman stickers. Evangelion isn't the only series they've done, but it's the only one I collect. And there are hundreds of heavy plastic cards (seriously, they are much denser than paper). I've managed to finish a good number of the sets, but the earliest ones are definitely the most elusive.

 This card is a Binder card from the same series, and it, too, has been fairly elusive. I somehow got the other Binder card pretty early on in a big lot of cards, so I'm happy to finish that little set too!

Finally, I neglect my idol card collection for multiple reasons - finding singles is much harder than for baseball, especially, but also this collection is a really minor one for me. I tend to just buy cheap complete sets if I buy anything at all, but I have picked up sets missing one or two cards, and lots which have left me with partial sets. One of my biggest internal debates is whether to try to complete the sets or just dump the singles. Honestly, buying complete sets can be cheaper sometimes even when I need just six or seven cards - full sets are occasionally found for only about 300-500 yen ($3-5) with singles starting at 50-100 yen. You do the math, and remember shipping is much cheaper here, too.

And when it comes to Yuki Morisaki here, I've finished the box loader set, but I still need seven of the inserts... decisions, decisions.

Until next time...