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.