A Single Pack of Wafers

Huh? Wafers? In Japan, you can still find lots of non-sport cards and stickers packaged with food. A few sports licenses also exist (Calbee does baseball and soccer most notably). I haven't posted in quite a while so I thought I'd share a snack I bought after lunch today. 

Miku Hatsune is a vocaloid, or digital singer. You can find her stuff everywhere. I've never really heard anything she (it?) has done but I see the character everywhere and I have ended up with a couple goodies. 

The product is made by Lotte, a well known candy (mostly chocolate) company from Korea, which also owns a couple baseball teams (Chiba Lotte Marines here and a team in South Korea) and a chain of fast food burger restaurants (Lotteria). The wafer is decent, but the sticker beneath is what I'm after for this post. 

The fronts are holographic. There's only one sticker per pal with 14 in the set. I got Meiko Sakine. I have no idea who that is. 

The backs describe the character. This is sticker number 8, and there is some kind of game through the QR code. 

I certainly won't bother with a whole set, but it's another cool oddball to add to my collection!

New Release: 2015 BBM Buffaloes Achievement

The last BBM Achievement set to be released features the Kintetsu Buffaloes of 1979, 1980, and 1989. These were years the Buffaloes were league champions.

As with the other sets (Whales, Braves, and Hawks), the design is reminiscent of menko cards from the 1950s and 1960s. The Buffaloes design uses red for the front photo border and on the backs. There are 30 cards in the set.

Again, Printed Autographed Card partial parallels were included with quantities of 45-50 each. There are 22 cards in the set, uniquely numbered from the base set.

And autographs are again the main draw here, with 21 subjects inserted. One player has 35 copies, another has 62, and the remaining have up to 100 copies each. And like the Whales set, it's a bit difficult to find images; there aren't many of these posted out there. These are on-card signatures.

Like most other BBM box sets, 3000 sets were issued. One autographed or foil autograph card was found in each box. Suggested retail price is 4000 yen.

New Release: 2015 BBM Whales Achievement

BBM seems to have wrapped up its Achievement series, at least for the time being, after issuing two sets in December labeled as "2015" issues. One of those two features the Whales.

The cards use the same design as the Buffaloes, Braves and Hawks sets, with different border and card back colors. The images look grainy, similar to the effect Topps uses with Heritage. There are 30 cards in the set.

There is a foil-signed partial parallel, Printed Autographs. There are 22 cards in that set, each serial numbered to 48 or 50 copies.

Additionally, 20 players signed autographs; one has 50 copies but print runs on the other cards are near or at 100 copies each. These are all on-card signatures.

3000 sets were produced and sold in boxed form with one printed autograph or hard-signed autograph per box. Retail price was 4000 yen, but it seems like the Whales set hasn't sold well, and I've seen a couple around 2000 yen on Yahoo! Japan Auctions in the past couple weeks. Singles haven't appeared frequently on the auction site either.