"Card Haul" from Gamagori

Not many foreigners make it to Gamagori. It's a town with a population under 100,000 about an hour outside of Nagoya, a city that is also often overlooked by tourists. I've now been there three times, though. There is a fun little amusement park called Lagunasia and several hot springs, plus a few other tourist attractions. 

But this is a baseball card blog, and my last two posts didn't have baseball cards. So I guess it's only fair that I share some. There's a card shop in town which might be one of the first card shops to have opened in Japan, or more likely it evolved from an old toy shop.

They have some older cards (mainly BBM) which are pretty well organized, but overall stock isn't amazing. There are also random US cards, which have been the most useful in my searches - especially the newer ones. Some inserts can be had for good-in-Japan prices. The shop also carries newer Japanese cards, but I can't really say I noticed a good selection. The owners also set up at the Nagoya card show, so they do have a decent collection of nicer cards.

I've been to the shop twice. The first time, I basically grabbed a bunch of singles from the 2015 Panini Americana set. Here are the cards I found this time:

 Here's a Motonobu Tanishige card for my collection. This is from one of the baseball trading card games called Prime Nine.

 ...And a Rami-chan too! It's getting tougher and tougher to find singles I still don't have for these two, though I don't really search Yahoo Auctions. What I really need most are the game cards, since card shops don't really carry TCG singles anymore. And baseball TCGs aren't even made anymore!

 Here's Wade Rowdon. Or Rawdon, as the back of his 1990 Calbee card claims. I needed this card for my foreigners collection.

 Minis! My mini frankenset got a little bit more complete after this trip. But not many baseball players made the cut. There are three actors related to baseball movies, though! Obviously, the first two cards are from Bad News Bears. And Penny Marshall is responsible for A League of Their Own.

 A base trotter, Globetrotter, and world trotter?

 Two out-of-this-world subjects... (ha ha ha ha...)

 And at this point I'm just horsing around.

To be honest, many of these cards could be upgraded to better subjects at some point, though having non-baseball cards in the set is fine by me!

Finally, some real baseball cards with active players... at least, halfway. The Mantle/Trout is for my now-complete set, while the Biggio/Altuve card heads into my Altuve collectiion!

I will eventually have a proper post dedicated to this card shop, but generally it won't be worth anyone's time to visit unless you're in town. That said, it's a fun shop and I'm sure I'll stop by again if I can!