Card Stores in Japan: Quad Sports, Takadanobaba, Tokyo

Quad Sports is certainly one of the best card shops in Japan.

In the very large store, there must be at least 200 monster boxes full of base cards (not all shown, of course), including NPB, Japan soccer, MLB, NBA, NFL, and idol cards. The best cards are in the showcases, which hold hundreds of autographs and relics, parallels, and more. Inserts are stored in binders in the cabinets behind the photo.

 Prices for NPB base cards start at 40 yen, as cheap as the Akihabara Mint location, and they naturally have a much bigger selection. This means they have more copies of each individual card and they carry nearly every release issued by BBM and Epoch. I don't think I've seen any Front Runner sets here yet. Most stores don't carry a lot of box set singles, but this one makes sure to include several full sets as singles for player collectors.

The older BBM card selection is pretty good too, though when it comes to pre-2000 cards, it can be hit or miss, though set selection still seems to be better than any other store I've seen yet. And of course, some sets have been stripped of most of the best singles by now. I believe a small handful of stars have been pulled out of all of the older sets, and they might be stored elsewhere.

The only real drawback of the store, though, happens in the organization of these sets. All of the boxes are labeled in Japanese, and boxes are stacked three high, plus two 1.5-meter (about 4.5 feet) stacks (and growing) of boxes that don't fit on the shelves. Getting to the right set requires a bit of Japanese knowledge. Older sets are a bit unorganized due to handling by customers, with early-90s BBM sets having major card-locating issues due to originally being sorted by team, not card number.

I only looked once or twice in the MLB boxes. Card prices are generally as you'd expect in Japan, overpriced compared to the US. However, I recall seeing a few cards priced at only 10 yen (10 cents) each. These boxes are sorted by player/team, and thus are really only useful for player collectors.

The idol cards are sorted by set, but I haven't looked much beyond that yet. Someday I plan to explore those boxes to build a nice personal collection.

 The low prices carry over to the inserts and parallels. The selection of somewhat-recent issues is again pretty good, and they open a lot of product which means that newest releases have plenty of the basic insert sets and a good handful of limited parallels and other hits.

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The store is a 2-3 minute walk from Takadanobaba Station, conveniently located on the Yamanote Line, Seibu Shinjuku Line (which I've never used) and the Tozai Subway Line, which also goes to Nakano Broadway. If you come by the Tozai Line, take Exit 4 and turn left when you reach the street.

It can be difficult to find the right building. You want the NT Building (NT ビル), located right next to a pedestrian crosswalk, across from a giant building which is an elementary school. Take the stairs or elevator up to the second floor; Quad Sports is in the back past the restaurants.

Quad Sports doesn't have a website as far as I know, and I'm not really sure when they're open, but they seem to hold at least standard hours and they're open on Sundays and Mondays for sure.

English here is really good for a store in Japan, and the guys who work here can answer most basic questions. They're pretty friendly and recognize me; they even have a basic idea of what I'm interested in when I visit and have shown me the latest product if it's not on the shelves/in the binders yet.