I recently found a new-in-package sticker album from Epoch's attempt to release an active-player baseball set in 2000. As far as I know, this is the only modern attempt at a sticker album set in Japan similar to Panini's baseball stickers in the past and modern-day Topps stickers.
The album came in a plastic poly bag for hanging on pegs in stores. A couple stickers are tucked inside the album.
PR stickers at the beginning are found in the album beneath the table of contents.
Each team has four pages. Due to the way the album is arranged, only two of those pages face each other, with the other two being split.
For each team, the first page is for four player stickers plus one of the insert set stickers. The center two pages hold an additional 13 player stickers. The last page for each team is designed to display the nine-card puzzle set for that team.
You can see one of my PR stickers in the image above. After the 12 sets of team pages, there are a series of "subset" pages.
"The Leading Players" is actually an additional limited insert set, with two stickers per team. Each team, therefore, has an additional page toward the back of the book.
There are two pages with lots of text toward the back; these focus on each of the two leagues and there's a "dream team" pair of pages sandwiched between them. I forgot to take a picture of the Dream Team pages.
The inside back cover has a complete checklist for the release, including all the inserts.
I'd love to have a full set of these stickers, but they seem to be pretty tough to come by. Busting a box or two would be fun and certainly get me close to a set if not giving me a complete set (that might happen soon). There are 204 player stickers, 108 puzzle stickers, 24 Leading Players stickers, and 12 Star Players stickers.
I don't think I had realized there was an album that went along with the Epoch stickers (It's not one of my favorite sets since all the regular cards are basically mugshots). NST did similar albums back in the 70's but I don't know of any other "modern" sets that did. Lotte did a sticker set in 2006 (besides the caricature ones) and there was a Hanshin Tigers sticker set a few years back but I don't know if either of those had companion albums.
ReplyDeleteJason Presley has busted a box or two of these looking for Tuffy Rhodes cards. He's got a bunch for sale at his eCrater store.
One of the boxes I bought came with the album. Since I wasn't planning on sticking any of the stickers, it never occurred to me to unwrap it, so I didn't know there were PR stickers. I'll have to open my album and see who I got.
ReplyDeleteThanks guys. I just won a bunch of packs off YJA from this set, so I'll probably try to make a set. I didn't know there were promo cards inside either until I opened my album. I'm curious if they're the same or if there are different ones.
ReplyDeleteI've bought a few samples of Tigers stickers from the past several years. The ones I've seen are card-sized and don't appear to belong to any sort of album. I think I bought a "pack" of them - one or two sheets plus a wafer candy - a couple years ago and don't recall seeing an album. The Tigers stickers seem to be an annual thing.
Speaking of Lotte, I've got at least one set of the caricature stickers headed my way too, so I guess I'm going to chase the run. I don't remember if I've seen the non-cartoony ones.
I haven't had much luck selling mine, so if you end up short a set, let me know what you need. I've had a bunch of the stars and gaijin listed on COMC for years and they're not moving. Even the few that someone bought from me to re-list are now on-sale for nearly what I'm charging.
ReplyDeleteFrom the packs I had, these are the stickers I need/have now:
ReplyDelete2000 Epoch Pro Baseball Stickers
Need 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 50, 52, 53, 61, 67, 68, 72, 73, 80, 81, 83, 88, 94, 95, 96, 98, 102, 103, 104, 110, 112, 114, 121, 123, 127, 132, 135, 143, 146, 152, 153, 154, 160, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 175, 178, 181, 182, 184, 188, 189, 197, 198
2000 Epoch Pro Baseball Stickers Puzzles
Have 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 26, 30, 36, 43, 48, 57, 63, 66, 69, 71, 76, 81, 84, 93, 99, 105, 107
2000 Epoch Pro Baseball Stickers Inserts
Leading Players have #5, 9, 11, 14, 23
Star Players have #2, 4
It would be nice to find another cheap box or two to bust before trying to knock singles off the list, but at the same time those puzzle and insert sets look like they'll be tough to put together...