Finally Complete: AKB48 Trading Collection 2

 I've talked a bit about AKB48 on the blog in the past. But for those of you who don't know:

They are a Japanese idol girl group based in Akihabara. The main group has 48 girls, who are split into three teams, and then a couple "minor league" teams. There are spin-offs in other locations with similar formats.*

*Due to the pandemic, groups have been eliminating some of the sub-group teams. But that's not important anyway, now is it?

While they still exist today, they have fallen from peak popularity. AKB48 was biggest around the time I first arrived in Japan, about ten years ago. And with great popularity comes great card sets. Spin-off groups like SKE48 also got some card sets with similar designs and formats.

Two AKB48 sets were issued under the "Trading Collection" brand. The first one was a massive 264 cards, including short-printed foil, hologram, and foil hologram cards. The second set had 168 cards including short-printed shiny and clear cards. Both sets included multiple cards of each member for at least some of the sub-groups.

I got a large lot of cards from both sets, and I've been chasing after the missing cards since then. I managed to finish the first series first, three years ago.

Last year I made a big push to track down the remaining cards I needed for the second set, and I thought I had finished it after finding a couple cards online. But after sorting through everything, I realized I was one card short.

Not anymore.

This card must have just slipped through the cracks. It isn't special by any means; it's not a short print and Rie Kitahara wasn't one of the most popular members, though she consistently performed on the group's main singles.

There are only a few shops to find these cards these days. So I tried the only one I know of in Tokyo, but they didn't have it. Luckily, someone listed it on Yahoo! Japan Auctions earlier this month and I got it for a reasonable price.

I'm definitely glad to cross this set off of the list! It is one of the few Japanese idol group sets I've managed to complete. And I probably won't undertake a similar endeavor again. I still have a handful of idol sets I'd like to finish off, though they are looking nearly impossible to find now. I will say that not finishing those would be disappointing, but not heartbreaking, because they are all over 10 years old and never were that special to me.

Buying Women's Clothing, a.k.a. Idol Relic Cards

I guess idol cards can be filed under "those crazy things Japanese people do!", but America's done it too. Tobacco companies had series of beautiful ladies inserted in their products well over 100 years ago, and there are plenty of card sets issued in the 1980s through 2000s by Playboy, Hustler, and other adult magazine companies. And then there are all those Benchwarmer sets.

Japan has issued cards for idol singers for decades, generally in the form of bromides. Starting in the 1990s, standard trading cards for race queens and bikini models hit the shelves, quickly evolving into what we have today.

Just like Benchwarmer sets, Japanese idol cards have autographs, kiss cards, and relics. There are often Polaroid photos, called chekis, too.

Of course, relic cards for models are generally going to be clothes. So, buying relic cards, I guess I'm picking up some women's clothing. Anyway... Yuko Ogura is my favorite idol, and I found a cheap lot of relics from early in her career.

The Avant Garde sets came out from 2003-2005, with a couple of just Yuko and at least one more featuring several models. This relic is just a pair of pajamas.

 Here's a skirt relic from a cute costume in the Avant Garde set.

 Sakurado still issues cards today, including some baseball sets. This swatch is of her "dress", which is actually a flannel shirt.

 Bomb is a gravure magazine, and several sets have been issued under various Bomb titles. This is a skirt relic. Note the Avant Garde mention in the copyright line.

Finally, this Hyper card, also through Avant Garde, is another Bomb line (I think). This relic is not of that bikini, but the scarf she has draped over her head.

All four make for nice additions to my Yuko collection!

2007 Sakurado Miss Flash Complete Set (2006 Miss Flash)

This fifteen-card set was released in a box along with a video and some other goodies, but you're here for cards, right?

So there are the cards at the top, a button and a strap, a DVD, the special card, and the large "life photo" print. My scanner chopped off the right edge of this scan.

 Loose in the box was a special card. I'm not sure exactly what options were there, but I'm guessing single-signed and multi-signed cards could be found.

 My loose card, as you see, was a "print autograph" card, serial numbered 006/500.

Before getting to the base set, Flash is a photo magazine focusing on pretty girls - celebrities, models, etc. - cover girls these days are members of idol groups, but others can be found inside. Miss Flash is a beauty pageant started by the magazine in 2006. This card set features the winner, runners-up, and Jury Special Award winners from that first competition. (Miki was the winner, Natsuki and Ako runners-up, and Yuki won the special award.) Despite the competition being in 2006, the set has a 2007 copyright, so it must have been released early in the year.

There are 15 regular cards. Each of the four ladies in the set have three cards each, with the remaining three cards featuring group photos. Here is the base set:

With each model getting three cards, there are six solo photos for each. The quad cards feature two photos each, with a total of five different outfits (card 14 has the same costumes on front and back). I wonder if any costume cards were made for this set.

Anyway, until next time...

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...