Each year's Shining Venus set brings about three dozen female athletes, usually chosen as much for their appearance as their athletic prowess. Some of the subjects are returnees from prior years, with several being "rookies" for this year's release. BBM is exploiting that now by using "Rookie Card" designation on base cards and issuing limited "Rookie Version" autographs.
I scan through the set and choose the autographs I want to chase each year - I focus mostly on oddball (real) sports (you won't find that Bikini Fitness woman's autograph in my collection unless it's given to me for free) and my favorite sports.
There is one more autograph on the way, which I should hopefully post in the next couple of days, leaving two more to chase. If I can knock those last two out of the way quickly I can then focus my efforts on the 2018 Topps Olympic set and autographs!
I like the variety of sports in Shining Venus and the quality of the Japanese female athletes is top notch. On average, loads better than their male counterparts.
ReplyDeleteVariety of sports is awesome. I'm a big fan of Ginter and Goodwin mostly because of the variety of subjects. Japan is definitely proud of its athletes, but Yuzuru Hanyu is definitely the most popular one right now.
DeleteAnd US women's gymnastics is always better than Japan women's gymnastics. That is a law of nature! Or should be.
I like that BBM does different sports. Badminton is popular in Korea too. Some of my middle school girls play and we have a dodgeball team and badminton team.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you have a dodgeball team - it actually competes against other schools? I don't think they do that here. They do play dodgeball, but I think only in elementary school, and not competitively.
DeleteThey do but it's usually a tournament I think, maybe once or twice a year. That's for both sports. They don't actually have conferences like in the US where youth sports are so much more popular (and populous).
DeleteLove the oddball sports. Wish they'd make a product like this here in the states, but I guess it's hard enough to get people to buy baseball, basketball, football, and hockey cards here in the states.
ReplyDeleteBadminton is really popular with some of my students as well. Speaking of table tennis and gymnastics, I had two 7th graders this year that are really good. One of them made the U12 National Team (table tennis). She showed my some videos of her competitions on YT and it's crazy how talented these kids are.
And the other one (gymnastics) just won a competition last weekend in the pommel horse and all-around for his age group. It's the first time in 20 years that I've had any students who are competing at this level in either sport. It's a long ways off, but maybe one day they'll be representing the US at the olympics.
I've never heard of Rhönrad, but it sure has a fancy name.
Topps has the Olympic set every few years, but it's not very comprehensive (less than 50 players this year) and only once every four years for any given sport. So I guess Ginter and Goodwin are the only ways to go.
DeleteCongrats to your students! It would be cool to see your students make it big, I'm sure.
It's a fancy name for wheel gymnastics, but it does look pretty fun.