Scans: Giants Player Cards 2013 Part Two

The 2013 season saw the Giants issue two stadium giveaway card sets. Yesterday's post focused on active players, while today's offerings are of OB (retired) players. The Yomiuri Giants honored some of their past greats throughout that season, and that included card giveaways. The design again stayed pretty consistent. As you can see, some players had multiple days, while others just one.

Scans: Giants Players Cards 2013

I'm not aware of any team other than the Yomiuri Giants giving away free cards at the stadium, and they've been doing it for quite some time. Other teams do have cards, but those are almost exclusively distributed through their fan clubs.

I came across a bunch of "Players Card" singles a few months ago. I found so many, in fact, that I'm splitting this up across two posts. Here is the first stack, from April through July 2013. The card front design remained fairly consistent, but there are some different back styles, as you can see below. The variations occur on the two dual-player cards, using somewhat different designs to provide all of the information for each player on their "front" side.

2009 Topps WBC Japan Stadium Giveaway Uncut Sheet

 This is a promotional sheet from Topps for the 2009 World Baseball Classic box set. I have the set itself already. I believe the sheet was given out at WBC games here in Japan.

The eight player cards are distributed two per Asian team. I like the promo card at the bottom with multiple languages, even if it is just an ad for Topps.com.

I'm curious if other sheets were given out at other stadiums.

2008 Yomiuri Giants Players Day Cards

I was poking around Akihabara recently and came across a couple baseball cards from a Yomiuri Giants giveaway from 2008. I've seen these before and I have one in my collection already, but they're very attractive and these two were inexpensive.

 The cards come in a large holder with a photo of the player.

Inside is a facsimile signature and the card itself, similar to the way collectible phone cards are sold here.

 The fronts have a holographic foil of sorts that looks very nice; backs include the usual details. You can see that the date of the Seung Youp Lee event was May 25, 2008.

 Here is Yoshitomo Tani's card. I'm not sure exactly how one gets these cards.

Tani's Players Day was on June 8th. I'm assuming that they are given away at the gate to a certain number of fans; it could be that all fans who attend the game that day get a card. This year's Players Day events were spread out over nine dates, though two of those dates included two players. It looks like the two players shared a card.

I can't verify the 2008 events, but the 2014 sets have print runs of 40,000 cards, and it looks like they were given out to the first 40,000 attendees. The 2014 dates included special jerseys and "sheets" on sale; the sheets look like decent-sized banners and should be pretty big for the nearly $40 price tag they carry.