This is turning into an epic post marathon, mainly because I did a surprisingly good job of finding a big variety of cards. Granted, they all came from a single store in Taipei, but I'm happy I have such a nice sampler.
We'll continue with a Japanese card that isn't quite a card. This is actually a train pass/ticket which features the Hanshin Tigers. I'm guessing there was an entire series of these.
As you can see, it was originally purchased for 2000 yen, but all of that value was used up by the train rider in (what I assume is) November. I believe the card was purchased in August of 1997, given the numbers on the left side. I wonder why the buyer would wait three months before using it. Maybe he bought a bunch of them and used them up over time!
Okay, back to CPBL. As you can tell by the date in the lower right, these are from 1995. The top-left logo says A PLUS CARD. I kind of like the fairly realistic baseball seam on the right hand side.
The backs continue the seam, plus statistics. Note the card number on the left side just above the hologram, and the printing designation (1/15000) in the lower right. I wonder if 15,000 was a small number for Taiwanese collectors - in 1995 that would be pretty tiny in the MLB market.
I picked up another card for trade.
And one more tradeable.
This one's a keeper, though. I'm not sure if it's a short-printed subset or a full-on parallel. The logo in the upper-left is in silver foil, while there is additional gold printing at the bottom - the V-shaped etched foil reminiscent of Pinnacle plus the notation "1995 Regular Starters" in the middle.
The backs look about the same, except the designation 1/7000, which again I'm assuming is the print run.
It's time to go full-on Fleer. In 1997, the CPBL set got really flashy with lots of gold foil to be found. I don't have any regular cards from the set, but I found two subsets. This is a card honoring a Golden Glove winner, and it is die-cut at the top (the black along the top is where it's die-cut). All the text on the front is in gold foil, as is the '97 Pro-Card logo at the upper right.
The back shows this is card 224 in the set and contains some stats and a little more gold foil printing.
From the same set, this award honors the most improved player. It's a foilboard card with an awesome baseball design in the background that is really hard to see in the scan. Gold foil is used for all the text you can see in the scan above.
You can see the baseball background (in mirror reverse) somewhat behind the four photos and long write-up about this player's improvement. You can see his 1995 and 1996 statistics at the bottom too - I'm not sure if I'm reading it correctly but he went from striking out 59 in '95 to 149 in '96, and his ERA dropped from 5.14 to 3.81.
We're on to 1999 now. This is an insert titled Rookies (note the top-left?). The card looks a lot like Upper Deck's backgrounds from the 2000s.
The card is numbered 19 of 23R, and the card seems to indicate a copyright year of 1999. The manufacturer here is T-Point.
The regular card is a little more traditional. Minimal design elements are used, though the team's name and logo appear quite prominently on the front...
...and the back. 1998 and career statistics are crammed on the back somehow. I wonder what that 800.667 statistic is - innings pitched? 800 2/3? What an interesting way of showing it.
We jump ahead from 1999 to 2006. I didn't find any cards from that era, though I'm sure some had to be printed somehow - most likely team sets. Anyway, in 2006, the baseball seam design returned, but much more subtly, and a white border was used on the left and bottom. A team-color strip is on the right side. The CPBL logo in the upper-left has a baseball 16, denoting the 16th year of CPBL existence.
The backs contain career statistics and a design that again looks a lot like Upper Deck or Fleer. The copyright information at the bottom might say (assuming my simple deductive skills are correct) the set was printed (or released) in October of 2006.
I again have a couple for trade.
Both of them being Elephants, including this guy throwing his bat high in the air.
Well, we're within five years of the current season now, but I still have many more cards to go. Stay tuned for the next installment!
I've started posting the checklist for the 1995/96 A Plus set on my blog. From reading jackli7751's blog, there are some 500 cards in the set, but he only has scans for the main 192 player cards. Apparently there were also the expected award winners and such, but they arent' numbered with the base cards. It also sounds like there might have been parallels of the base cards.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I could make out on jackli7751's blog, what you have from the A Plus set are actually the silver and gold parallels as the regular base cards weren't numbered. I've also now got partial checklists posted for the 1997/98 ProCard set and 1998/99 T-Point sets.
ReplyDeleteJason, thanks for the two updates. I thought the gold would be a parallel, but the 1/15000 (silver?) cards don't have any special foil. It's good to know I have some of the "tougher" cards out of the way. I really want to make a return trip to Taiwan to do some real card hunting, though time and money are at a premium (for everyone!).
ReplyDeleteLooks like the difference between the base and the silver for the A Plus set is the baseball field part at the bottom of the card. On the base cards, the field colors are the same brightness as on the reverse. The silver cards have that slight silver tint, and of course the numbering on the back. But I agree, you wouldn't think 15000 cards would be all that "limited" in a market like Taiwan, that couldn't be all that big to begin with, and that was even before the gambling scandals hurt the sport.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the 15000s were one per pack. I wonder how many of the cards were actually produced (all of them?) and how many were shipped overseas like menkos were after WW2.
ReplyDelete