Breaking Boxes Badly: Upper Deck 2000 Japan Sydney Olympic Team (Box 2)

Yesterday I dropped 15 packs of Olympic history in your laps. Let's slice open the other 15 packs and see where that gets me.

But first, I mentioned that I was wondering what the redemption cards were for. A little research did give me some information. There are 44 "medal" cards as such:

• 5 Gold Medal cards
• 31 Silver Medal cards
• 8 Bronze Medal cards

These seem to be tied to specific players or teams. I don't know what they look like or how rare they are right now.

 This box starts with a baseball player, which is a good sign. There are 19 in the set, including some pretty big names.

 Two for two! So far, so good. Even if I do recognize that swimming card from yesterday.

 Another checklist. That's good, because I need all of them.

 And another baseball card. I recognize that swimming card in the bottom row; I think that's number three between two boxes.

 No baseball here. I recognize that bald wrestling guy from the first box. You'd think they could find a more flattering picture of him.

 This pack has a baseball player and a couple soccer players. Those are the two most popular sports in Japan, so getting as many of them as possible is a good thing.

 More soccer and baseball. I'll take it!

 There's baseball here, though it's a duplicate.

" If it hadn't been for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."

 I recognize several cards here.

 If you can't tell, I've run out of things to say about the cards. There's only so much random commentary I can give you, you know.

 However, since we're talking about Olympics, I am looking forward to the 2016 Topps Olympics set. I will definitely get the base set, and I hope to find some good relics and autographs to go with it.

 This is the first and last Olympic set issued in Japan. There are some "National Team" sets issued by BBM but they focus on individual sports - gymnastics, soccer, baseball, swimming, badminton, and so on.

 It's not an exciting shot, but that card of Tomohiro Kuroki gives a good idea of what Japan's baseball uniforms looked like.

And that finishes the second box.

With two boxes, I have a total of 300 cards. There are 270 base cards (264 in the set) and 30 Sport Category cards (29 in the set). After sorting the two boxes, about 100 of the 300 cards - one third of the two boxes - were duplicates. There were a couple triplicates in there too.

Thanks to NPB Card Guy, I had a good start on this set, around 30% of all the cards. But there was overlap there too, so I have only 228 cards of the set now (78%). I am missing 65 cards. I'll pick them up at card shops as I can. Unfortunately, I'm missing some key baseball players, too, so finishing this set will take a good bit of searching and possibly cash.

My want list for this set is linked below. Cards I have will have an "x" in the left column. If the list doesn't show up, it means I completed the set!