Set Building: 2004 Calbee

I mentioned yesterday that I was tackling the 2004 Calbee set. Finding singles for this set seems to be much harder than the 2005 set... or even the 2000 set. But I recently found a few to knock off the want list:

 Shinjo is a popular player and you'll see him again soon. He always seems to have a big smile.

 Not so action-y, that Johjima card has a fun shot anyway. I just wish we could see more of what's going on in the dugout.

 Cool, a mascot cameo! This card, too, suffers from Overcropitis. Please, photographers, get some more background in some of the photos.

Another smiling Shinjo. These two are from the All-Star subset.

And that's all she wrote... or all I wrote, for now. Except... the microphone has a green sponge (whatever that thing is called) on it. That might be the first green microphone I've ever seen.

Seven Days Without A Post Makes One Weak.. Week?

(It's only been five days.)

Yeah, been lazy lately. Actually, I have been keeping busy, but not very productive all the time, so I haven't been churning out posts like I usually do. Part of that is because I've been hammering out the details for my Golden Week trip (the Japanese spring break, essentially... but kids have a break this month too). And at the same time, I've been doing all kinds of other chores and errands while living in two places simultaneously. But I do have a lot to share, so let's see if I can kick it into high gear?

Well, maybe start in low gear...

One thing I've spent a lot of time on these past few weeks is my Gaijin Collection - that is, the collection of foreigners who've played baseball in the NPB. Right now, my database sits at 1130 players and managers, of which about 225 have no records of cards in the Trading Card Database. For the obtainable players, I'm down to about 100. (Yes, that means I'm approaching 800 players in my collection!) But most of those players only appeared in Owner's League, older Calbee, Takara, or menko sets, and thus won't be too easy to locate.

 Here's one! Garry Jestadt with the Taiyo Whales. He appeared on three cards in the 1975-76 Calbee set, and I found one of them.

I picked up a few more vintage Calbees to go with it:

 This Hankyu Braves card will go well in my Japan Series collection!

These days, Calbee's base set is purely base cards, with subsets being found numbered separately as non-limited inserts. But in the 1970s, each series either was its own subset, or had subsets in it. Here are a couple examples - you can read about these in my Calbee Through the Years posts. (Eventually I'll have an index for these...)

One of my goals for this year was to get two BBM sets, plus the current year's set. I haven't found any that I need yet - they seem to just show up randomly - but one thing I have been working on instead is Calbee. I'm actually fairly close (depending on your definition of fairly close) to finishing six sets:

• 2000: a few inserts and all of Series 2
• 2003: Series 1 is in the books
• 2004: a decent number of base cards and inserts
• 2005: a handful of base cards and inserts - my goal is to finish this set this month
• 2009: Series 1 is in the books
• 2016: only some inserts left - I might try to finish this in March as well

While the goal was BBM, I'm counting Calbee completions under that goal, as overall I was hoping for two older flagship sets of any kind. Something I've been considering as a side project of sorts is the Calbee 1973 Crossed Bats set.

Containing 91 cards, this set is essentially a parallel to the larger 1973-74 set of 368 cards. While I know building all of the Calbee sets is a lifelong, very costly challenge, I believe I can put together this 91 card set bit by bit. And I've got a good start:

Cards 5 and 6 (Nagashima), and 11 (Oh) are some of the key cards in the set. There are many "keys" here, though - card 1 won't be cheap, and the set is riddled with Yomiuri Giants, who tend to carry a premium. But I might swing back out to Nakano this weekend and see what I can find from this set to really get started.

The 1973 Calbee set will be a challenge, and I don't see it being finished this year. But I've been wanting to tackle a new vintage set after finishing 1973 Topps last year, and what better way to follow up a 1973 set with another 1973 set? (Oi, what am I getting myself into?!)

This Set is Cool: 2015 BBM Cheer Dragons SP Inserts

Japanese baseball has cheerleaders. Think of that what you will - really, other than eye candy, they don't have much of a purpose. There are actual cheer leaders who orchestrate the chanting you hear at a Japanese baseball game. But the annual cheerleading card sets (Dancing Heroine Mai, Dancing Heroine Hana, and a team box set) sell very well.

The 2015 box set featured the Cheer Dragons, the cheerleading team for the Chunichi Dragons, who play in Nagoya. The release had autographs and cheki (polaroid) autographs, along with "Life Photographs" of the cheerleaders. Of course, there are regular base cards, and a set of eight inserts were also made.

Those inserts came one per box, and feature foil facsimile signatures of two cheerleaders over photos of them in a standing pose. The backs feature two more photos, this time with seated poses.

I probably would have never even thought of building this set if I hadn't come across several of the cards for only 100 yen each at a card show. With only eight cards in the set, it didn't take too much effort to finish it. And since I collect cheerleader cards, it fits right into my collection, but it also serves as my first completed box set-insert set.

All eight cards, front and back, are shown below. The cards look better in person, since the foil doesn't scan well.