Clearing Out the Back Stock: Trade with NPB Card Guy Part 3

From what I remember from reading NPB Card Guy's older posts, he used to open boxes of product to build his BBM sets. While that's certainly more time consuming (in a good way - busting packs and sorting cards is a lot of fun in my eyes), you end up with extras (great for trades, if you know someone) and more importantly, you end up with holes in your collection.

When the main source of cards is on the other side of the world, that can be problematic. So these days, he just goes after the full sets in most cases. But that does mean that he has a good stash of cards he'd like to clear out. At least, that's what I gather. So he generously offered to help me fill in some of my needs in a few collections!

 First, I have to say I'm not happy with the crop job my flatbed scanner does. It seems like all of the cards have lost a little border on the outside; that's fine for documents with white borders, larger photos, and things like that, but for 2.5" x 3.5" pieces of cardboard, a decent bit is left out.

These team checklists are cool enough as is, just because they feature the team logos. But I need team logo cards to represent Japan Series participants. You'd be surprised how infrequently things like this appear on cardboard. And keep in mind that singles start at 50 yen in most shops - 100 yen in Mint corporate shops. I can't justify paying a dollar just for a logo of the Lions.

From this point forward, there isn't too much to say: all of these players are foreigners in the NPB. That's what collection they're headed to! Let's play a game: how many names do you recognize? (I'm out because I'm familiar with most of them thanks to their involvement in Japanese baseball. I don't remember who I remember being in the MLB.)

 Looking at all these closeup photos makes me want to put together my own History of Uniform frankenset. I might just do that next year. Or sooner than next year.

 The Hall card is an insert, but in the 1994 BBM set it was pretty hard to tell. Maybe that's why BBM always uses foil for its inserts and some of their parallels. The Yan card is an example of a foilboard card, while most of BBM's parallels these days just use foil signatures.

NPB Card Guy was nice enough to send them alphabetically by last name, which is mostly how I scanned them.

 In addition to filling a lot of my want list in this collection, there's also a really good overview of BBM sets around the year 2000.

 And this concludes the trade part of this post series! Tomorrow I'll finish it off with a couple other cards that were in the package.

(Edit: I had the hardest time uploading these scans thanks to spotty internet service, so I had to hack out most of the text a bit faster than I would have liked.)

Ma-kun: Another Big Rookie Card!

I've really been tackling my collection head-on these past two months. And in addition to working on my New Year's goals, I've also established a couple new collections. One of those is a full-set run of BBM's flagship issues from their inception in 1991 to present. I'm slowly but surely doing this for Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Ultra, and Stadium Club's MLB issues (Upper Deck is completed), too, so it's only natural I chase a Japanese set. Calbee is out of the question; I have a few full sets, but I have neither the budget nor the time to hunt down the 1970s and 1980s.

BBM issues its flagship in two series, dubbed "1st Version" and "2nd Version" despite the second version following the first sequentially. In my mind, that's a series, not a version. Pinnacle and New Pinnacle are two versions (look it up...). Topps and Topps Chrome are two versions. Anyway...

Finding full years of BBM sets is kind of tough, but I come across full sets of the individual versions easily enough. I recently picked up a near-full set of 2007's 1st Version; the only missing card was this:

That's Ma-kun's RC. He does appear in the Rookie Edition set in 2007 and other issues, but this is probably his most important base rookie card. And with that, my 2007 1st Version set is complete! I'd like another copy, though, as I'm planning to start mini player collections for Masahiro Tanaka and Kenta Maeda.

2011 Sports Graphic Number Shinjiro Hiyama

The set I posted about yesterday, featuring Kenta Maeda, is just one of many in a series of single-player releases by Sports Graphic Number (or under the Sports Graphic Number name). I believe this is the first baseball issue they printed, issued in 2011 and featuring Shinjiro Hiyama.

 The base cards have several different designs. Some cards seem to be in a series sharing the same design, while other cards appear to be completely unrelated. I was considering showing all the different types, but there were really just too many. This is completely different from the most recent issues, with a very simple design that exists on all the regular cards. However, there are puzzle backs that SGN still does today, as you can see above. The regular cards are identified by the text "REGULAR_##" on the back, with ## being the card number.

 There are Box Privilege cards for the Hiyama set, though I'm not sure how many. If there are only checklists, there must be only two. As you can see, the base set is really divided up into four main subsets, and I might go back and pick up one card from each subset.

The Special card set is split into three subsets of nine cards each; future releases have two subsets. The checklist distinguishes each subset. Each subset also assembles into a puzzle.

 Cards 1-9 have gold foil and a flame style background.

 Cards 11-18 have a red background with Hiyama's jersey number (24), and silver foil.

The last subset, #19-27, has no foil, with a yellow background with a close-up of a tiger's face.

Because I don't have the second checklist and it's not listed in any guides, I'm not sure about any rare cards such as autographs, relics, or photo cards. The other checklist is on my want list right now so I can update this post sometime.

RIP Tony Gwynn

As a younger fan and collector growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, it should be no surprise that players like Will Clark, Jose Canseco, and Rickey Henderson were my favorites. I'd guess that any kid's first favorite players probably come from their local team.

But as I learned about baseball outside of my local neighborhood, I discovered Tony Gwynn. My interest in him was due to his dedication and his commitment to being great.

I read a magazine article some time in the early 1990s about Gwynn and his approach to batting practice. Every pitch was practice to accomplish something - hit a ground ball, get a line drive out of the infield, make successful hit-and-run contact. While the home run was really becoming the number one stat in the news, Tony stuck with what worked for him. And you are probably aware of all the time he spent studying pitchers before games as well.

Unfortunately, I never got to see him play in person, as far as I know. Through the 1990s I appreciated him but I was certainly caught up in the Frank Thomas-Ken Griffey Jr-Cal Ripken saga. (I got to see Griffey and Thomas play in 2007 and 2008, respectively.)

I followed along in 1994 as he hovered near .400, and I was very glad to hear he was inducted to the Hall of Fame with Cal Ripken in 2007. I visited the Hall of Fame that year, but it was before the ceremony so I didn't see his plaque. 

In 2011, I took a trip to the LA area. I visited a bunch of baseball landmarks, including SDSU's Hall of Fame and baseball field. After taking a few pictures of the field, as I was walking back to my car, I spotted a man getting out of his.

It was Him.

I nodded hello, he nodded back. I never exchanged words with him. I never asked for an autograph or a photo. But for two seconds I was having a non-verbal conversation with one of my heroes.

And that's how I'll always remember him. A normal guy, with his normal car, going to do his job.

New Release: 2014 Sports Graphic Number Tomonori Maeda

Before starting this post, does anybody know all the Sports Graphic Number sets? Using SCF and my memory, I have the following:

• 2014 Tomonori Maeda
• 2013 Kenta Maeda
• 2012 Hiroyuki Nakajima
• 2012 Hiroki Kokubo
• 2011? Masahiro Tanaka

The latest offering under the Sports Graphic Number name is another single player pack-based issue. Tomonori Maeda retired at the end of the 2013 season and multiple sets and commemorative cards have been issued already: BBM did its own box set and Maeda is also in the 2014 Farewell set.

 The base cards use the usual template: most of the fronts have their own picture, with the backs usually forming picture puzzles. However, some fronts are used to make 4- or 6-card puzzles. It appears that almost all of the photos were taken at the same game or series; some older photos appear at the end of the set. There's also a checklist card. I have yet to see a SGN card with stats or a bio on it. The base cards have an RG prefix, with 90 cards in the regular base set.

 There is one 18-card SP insert set. The first nine cards have gold foil signatures with photos from Maeda's farewell speech. The back forms another puzzle.

 The other nine cards use silver foil and generally have photos of Maeda at bat. Both the gold and silver versions seem to come at equal ratios in packs. Again, there's another puzzle on the back of the silver SPs.

There are also six Privilege cards, each with their own images on front and back. Three of the cards are Box Privilege cards (numbered 1-3) and the other three are distribution privilege cards (numbered A, C, and F). There may be more privilege and promo cards I'm not aware of; these are the only ones I've seen. The distribution privileges haven't been available in stores, only on Jambalaya's website, though they are priced the same as the box cards.

Jambalaya image

There are nine photo cards, identified on the checklist as "Rare" cards. They are framed limited cards, numbered to 145 each.

Jambalaya image

The memorabilia and autograph checklist looks like this:

• Memorabilia 1: Home Uniform (note that patches are numbered as part of the overall scheme, but have a P prefix) (#/480)
• Memorabilia 2: Visitor Uniform (#/480)
• Memorabilia 3: Undershirt (#/160)
• Memorabilia 4: Bat
• Memorabilia 5: Batting Glove
• S-Rare 1: Signed Card (3 types)
• S-Rare 2: Message Card (3 types)
• SS-Rare: Signed Card (distinct from the regular signed cards, I'm not sure how though)
• Authentic 1: Signed (on or with a ball?) (3 types)
• Authentic 2: Signed with Home Uniform
• Authentic 3: Signed with Visitor Uniform
• Authentic 4: Signed with Undershirt

2009 BBM Legend Series Sadaharu Oh: Card Gallery

About five years ago, BBM released a single-player box set bigger than any other before or since (as far as I can tell). The Sadaharu Oh Legend Series set issued in 2009 contained 89 base cards plus one special card, with all the cards featuring Sadaharu Oh.

Card fronts use full-bleed images and minimally-invasive text. A silhouette of Oh is found at the bottom. The cards feature images through his career as player and manager, with some very nice pictures included (given the quality of photography that seems to be available for older images). The playing-day cards can be grainy, and I have to wonder if they could have been digitally cleaned up. Still, they give a vintage historical feel to the set.

The set breaks down into subsets as follows:

• 1-9: Legend
• 10-18 Flamingo (leg lifted in his backswing)
• 19-71 History (cards are based on specific years and dates)
• 72-80 Face (close-up head shots)
• 81-89 Big 1 Shot (all the photos show his jersey number)

The set was sold in large boxes for 3000 yen with one of a few possible special cards: 9 photo cards, 9 film cards, 9 printed autograph cards, or one Memory of Sadaharu Oh. Each box set is serially numbered to 8000. The inside of the box has a lot of bonus details about Oh's career including his batting stats.

The set was labeled "Volume 1" in the Legend Series. The other two players I know of to be released in this series are Kazuhiro Kiyohara (#2, 45 cards) and Masaichi Kaneda (#3, 34 cards). I'm semi-interested in obtaining the other two box sets, but since they have only half to one-third the number of cards as the Oh set, I feel it's a step down. BBM has issued other player-specific box sets over the years and a large Shigeo Nagashima-focused set, but this stands out as the crown of their collection - as far as size.

Here are all of the cards in the set: