Yu Darvish's True Rookie Cards

Darvish may have MLB rookie cards in 2012, but you can't ignore his start in Japan. He was drafted in 2004, and as such started appearing in card sets in early 2005.

His first card, chronologically, is in the 2005 BBM Rookie Edition set (#12). I think it's safe to say that 99.99% of current rookies get their first card in this annual issue. After that, he appeared as part of a multi-player card featuring the team's draft picks in the "Challengers" box set (#30). And he was included in BBM's 1st and 2nd Version sets (their flagship release) on card #116, with silver and gold signature parallels, and #760.

Other rookie-year sets include two cards in the premium Touch The Game set (#25 and #147), with his first relic card - a game-used ball card with a logo parallel, and a photo card. He also has three Konami game cards.

There's one more rookie-year set that Darvish appears in; he has two cards in the annual Fighters team set. Card #F03 is on the left, below, and subset card #F72 is on the right. The team set, issued in packs, also includes Darvish's first autographed card, a parallel of the base set limited to only 10 copies.

His rookie cards are definitely the key cards in every set above, and while they aren't as expensive as one might pay for Pujols or Ichiro RCs in the US, they usually don't come cheap. But thanks to a poorly-listed auction on Yahoo Japan Auctions, I got both of the above cards and many more singles from Japanese players in the MLB for under $2 shipped. In fact, I didn't realize I was getting Darvish's rookie card until tonight, when I went through and pulled out the singles I needed from the lot.

Even without the RC, I certainly got my money's worth, as several cards went to a small collection I'm working on, and a few others went to my type collection - including that Newcomer parallel above.

2000 Epoch Pro-Baseball Sticker Album

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.

Review: 2015 BBM Carp Legends

BBM has been issuing team sets under the "Legends" name since 2013. Hiroshima is the most recent team to receive the treatment.

 The base set has 81 cards; #1-72 are "Legends" with a red background. These players were members of championship teams. The design itself is the same as the other Legends series sets, with a cloudy background. Career stats and the usual details are on the back. Photography is generally pretty good.

All-Time Legends rounds out the set (#73-81). Players in this subset were not a part of championship teams, but still stand out as great players on the team. Current ace pitcher Kenta Maeda is a part of this subset.

 There's a gold signature partial parallel numbered to 60 copies.

The lone insert is a nine card set titled "80's Best Nine" featuring nine of the best players on the Carp in the 1980s. I guess that goes without saying. There is a parallel of this insert with red foil over the "80's Best Nine" text serial-numbered to 60 copies.

There are 49 subjects in the autograph set, most of whom have 100 (or nearly that many) cards in the set. A few players have less. Additionally there are three dual-autograph cards, each with 10 copies.

The Legends series is nice in its simplicity, and the player selection focuses on certain eras usually during dynasties. This has the opportunity to provide a bit of a different player selection from the usual anniversary sets. There are still plenty of retired players which have no modern cardboard and are in the record books for winning awards or other accomplishments. But like most of BBM's team sets, there isn't really anything special here for collectors who aren't fans of the respective teams.

I like the red and green colors used in the base set; other sets have used more muted tones in blues or grays. I've missed posting about at least one set - the Giants - from this series.

You can see more scans and read a bit more about the set at Japanese Baseball Cards, which NPB Card Guy wrote about a couple months ago... somehow this set slipped through the cracks.