Choi Jeong

Today Choi Jeong of the SSG Landers hit his 468th career home run, pushing him past the legendary Lee Seung-yuop to become the all time home run leader in the KBO.  This is Choi's 20th season and he's spent all of them with the SK Wyverns/SSG Landers franchise.

His first baseball card is from Japan, not Korea - he's in the 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC set (he played for the Korean team in the 2009, 2013 and 2023 tournaments as well as the 2019 Premier 12).  His first Korean baseball card was from the 2010 KBO Game Set but his first LICENSED Korean baseball card was from the 2014 Ntreev Duael Super Star Baseball Season 1 set.  Here's an assortment of his cards:

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #W09R129

2010 KBO Game Set #AW-007

2014 Ntreev Duael Super Star Baseball Season 1 #SBC01-071

2015 Ntreev Duael Super Star Baseball Season 2 #SBC1502-101-N 

2016-17 SMG Ntreev Superstar Black Edition #SBCBK-049-AS

2017 Vittum Home Run Kings #1

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 Black #SCCR-02B/079

2019 SCC Regular Collection 2 - All Star #SCCR2-19/013

2020 SCC KBO League Premium Collection #SCCP1-20/S13

2021 SCC KBO Golden Premium #SCC-21/S12

He has cards from the last couple years but I don't have any KBO cards later than 2021.

Card Of The Week April 21

There's been a lot of discussion on-line this past week about an error on the back of Hiromi Itoh's card in the new 2024 Calbee Series One set.  Itoh's height is listed as 176 meters (577-ish feet) rather than 176 centimeters (around 5 foot, 10 inches).  Calbee has issued an apology and is offering to exchange the card for a corrected version "at a later date".  

While the error is amusing (Gaijin Baseball on Twitter dubbed it "Kaiju Itoh"), I've been somewhat surprised to see people trying to sell the card for inflated prices on Yahoo! Japan Auctions.  I mean, sure, it's an error card but as far as I can tell, all the Itoh cards have this error.  I've yet to see a corrected version for sale and it remains to be seen if Calbee will correct the card as part of the print run for Series One or just send corrected cards to folks who send in the error cards.

Here's the front and back of the card:

Mail Day From Jason

I wanted to do a quick post about some cards I got in the mail today from my friend Jason.  He'd put a couple interesting memorabilia and autograph cards up on Ebay that I picked up and as usual he threw in a bunch of random cards in the package with what I had bought.

First up are the afore mentioned memorabilia and autograph cards:

2022 BBM Genesis /300

2022 BBM Genesis /350

2023 BBM Genesis /200

2023 Epoch Premier Edition #AA-15 /97

The only other card I know was going to be in the package was this 2022 BBM Genesis card of Keita Nakagawa.  Nakagawa is one of the players who was in Genesis that year but none of BBM's flagship sets:

2022 BBM Genesis #060

Jason also threw in some 2023 BBM Genesis cards:

2023 BBM Genesis #020

2023 BBM Genesis #022

2023 BBM Genesis #032

There were also a couple cards from the 2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection:

2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection #002

022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection #074

A 2023 Topps 206 Mini card:

2023 Topps 206 #31

And finally two "kira" parallels from the 2023 BBM 2nd Version set:

2023 BBM 2nd Version #526

2023 BBM 2nd Version #527

Thanks so much, Jason, and, as always, it was a pleasure doing business with you!

More Topps Now News

I wanted to do a follow up post about the Topps Now NPB cards I wrote about the other day along with some other Topps Now related news:

- I had asked mr friend Ryan to pick up one of the Topps Now NPB cards - Natsuki Takeuchi - for me.  He was willing to do it but pointed out that not only did the card cost 1243 yen but there was a 550 yen shipping fee as well!  I told him the webpage for the card said there was "free economy shipping".  He said, yeah, it says that but when he went to check out, it told him shipping was 550 yen for a total of almost 1800 yen.  We decided to have him hold off on ordering it and give Topps a chance to fix the problem.  I discovered this evening that Topps "fixed" the problem by removing the "free economy shipping" text from the webpage.  So they're serious about charging 550 yen for shipping.  I'm struggling to find the words to describe how insane this is.  Epoch has been doing on demand cards in Japan for seven years now and has charged 500 yen per card the entire time.  That 500 yen includes shipping.  So Topps is attempting to break into the same market in Japan with cards that cost more than twice as much as the existing ones BEFORE you take into account the shipping charge which, by the way, is MORE than the price of an Epoch One card.  Am I getting this right? 

- I had not noticed the other day that the seven cards that Topps had for sale were numbered from 1 to 8 with #3 missing.  #3 is no longer missing as yesterday Topps added a card for Hotoka Yamakawa that will be on sale until April 25th, two days later than the other seven cards.

- Topps is also now selling a 30 card Topps Now team set for the Samurai Japan team that took on Team Europe back at the beginning of March.  Unlike the two previous Topps Now Samurai Japan team sets, Topps will not ship this one overseas.  The set cost 8800 yen (about $56) and domestic shipping in this case is free.  The set contains a number of stars including Munetaka Murakami, Kensuke Kondoh, Sosuke Genda and Chusei Mannami.  I'm particularly excited about the fact that it includes cards of the three collegiate players - pitchers Yumeto Kanemura and Yuto Nakamura and outfielder Misho Nishikawa.  There haven't been any baseball cards of Japanese collegiate players since the last time the Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set included memorabilia cards for the collegiate national team in 2020 and no Japanese produced cards since BBM's last Tokyo Big Six in 2013.  The cards will be on sale until May 16th.

- FedEx dropped off an unexpected package at my house a couple days ago.  I was kind of puzzled about who it was from - I really didn't think I'd be getting Zippy Zapped again so soon.  It turns out it was a package from Topps - they'd sent me a parallel card for one of the Topps Now Samurai Japan Asian Professional Baseball Championship cards they were selling back in November.  It was a nice surprise.  They'd sent me some parallels last year for the Topps Now cards for the friendlies against Australia but it had been so long since I'd gotten these cards that I had given up all hope of getting any parallels.  Maybe this means I'll get a parallel or two from the team set like I did last year.  Here's the card they sent me - it's #25/25:

2024 Calbee Series One

I got my 2024 Calbee Series One set in the mail last week in the same shipment that I got my 2024 BBM Rookie Edition set in.  The set is the first of what I hope will be three Series this year but fear will only be two.

The base set contains 84 cards - 60 "regular" player cards (5 per team), 18 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards.  The 60 player cards is the same that last year's sets had so it looks like the days of 72 player cards (which was most of the last 10-12 years) are over.  Since it's an even numbered year, the player's names are in Japanese on the front of the cards (they've been alternating every year since 2016 with English names in the odd number years and Japanese names in the even numbered years).  As has unfortunately become standard, the photos are very "meh" - pretty much all "pitchers pitching, batters batting" with only one "catcher catching" card.  There isn't even a horizontally oriented card to break up the monotony.

I've always felt that the player selection is kind of light on the big stars for Series One each year and that's true of this set to some extent.  Probably the biggest names in the set are Tetsuto Yamada, Tomoyuki Sugano, Sosuke Genda, Kona Takahashi and Yuma Mune along with dinosaurs like Masahiro Tanaka and Tsuyoshi Wada.  Now Calbee tends to not have a "regular" card of a player who's also in the accompanying subset which explains why guys like Kazuma Okamoto, Shugo Maki, Yuki Yanagita and Kensuke Kondoh don't have cards but not why Roki Sasaki or Munetaka Murakami don't.  There are no cards for rookies (at least in the baseball card sense - no 2023 draftees) and no cards for any players who changed teams over the winter.  There's also only one foreign player - Jose Osuna of the Swallows.

Here's some example cards:

#021 Tetsuto Yamada

#053 Kona Takahashi

#048 Takero Okajima

#031 Yuma Mune

#018 Tomoyuki Sugano

#006 Masato Morishita

I will say that despite the unimaginative selection of photos, the cards themselves look good as always.

The 18 "Title Holder" cards feature all the players who either won major awards (MVP, Rookie Of The Year, Sawamura) or led the league in one of the major categories last year - UNLESS that player moved to MLB over the winter.  As a result of that last stipulation, this subset does not include Yoshinobu Yamamoto (PL MVP, Wins, ERA & Strikeout leader), Yuki Matsui (PL Save leader) or Shota Imanaga (CL Strikeout leader).  It does, however, include the afore-mentioned Okamoto, Maki, Yanagita and Kondoh along with Shoki Murakami, Koji Chikamoto, Ukyo Shuto, Yuma Tongu and Gregory Polanco.  Here's the Chikamoto card:

#T-10

Calbee traditionally has 12 checklist cards spread across their usual three Series - four per Series.  The fact that Series One this year has six checklist cards is what makes me worry that, like last year, this year Calbee will only release two Series.

The good thing about the checklist cards is that usually they have the most interesting photos in the set and I think that's true once again for this set.  The cards feature events from last season for the top three teams in each league - Yusuke Ohyama of the Tigers having a walk off hit in the tenth inning of a game on August 22, the Buffaloes celebrating their third straight PL pennant, Shogo Akiyama of the Carp's walk off hit in Game One of the First Stage of the Central League Climax Series, Yudai Fujioka of the Marines' game tying hit in Game Three of the First Stage of the PL Climax Series, Toshiro Miyazaki of the Baystars' double to help them make the playoffs on September 29th, and Shuta Ishikawa of the Hawks' no-hitter on August 18th.  Here's the Fujioka card:

#C-04

If I sound disappointed in the set, it's because I am somewhat.  I feel like I'm repeating the old joke about the couple that goes to a restaurant - one of them complains that the food tastes terrible and the other one agrees and adds that the portions are too small.  I don't think the cards are ugly but the photo selection is bland and the set should be larger.  And I'll be very disappointed if there are only two Series again like last year.  But despite all that - it's a Calbee set.  If you like Calbee sets, you'll like this one.

You can see all the cards (including the "Star" and "Legend" inserts) over at Jambalaya.

2024 BBM Rookie Edition

You know, I make fun of Calbee for issuing pretty much the same flagship set year after year.  I should probably make fun of BBM more for doing essentially the same thing with the Rookie Edition set every year.

Rookie Edition is BBM's annual draft pick set, featuring all the players who were taken in the NPB draft last fall.  Or to be more accurate - all the players who were taken in the draft and came to terms.  It should probably go without saying that if the player didn't sign with the team that drafted him, he's not in the set.  It's a lot less common for an NPB draftee to not agree to join the team that drafted him but it does happen - and in fact in happened last fall when Shosei Takahashi, the first pick for the Swallows in the ikusei portion of the draft, ended up not signing with the team.  As a result, there's only 121 cards for draftees in the set - 72 from the regular phase and 49 from the ikusei portion - instead of 122.

The Rookie Edition set itself contains 135 cards in the base set.  Beyond the aforementioned 121 draftee cards, there are two "2023 Draft Pick" cards which act as a kind of checklist for the draftee portion of the set (but really just exist to make the number of cards divisible by three) and a twelve card "New Face" subset which features one young player from each team so that BBM can include autographed cards for the players with the set.

As usual the photos for the cards were all taken at the press conferences that each team holds to introduce their draftees to the fans and the press so they are generally boring poses showing a player swinging a bat, making a pitching motion or just adopting a "guts" pose.  (For the seventh year in a row BBM has included "secret" versions of the 12 first round picks which are short printed photo variants showing the player in a different boring pose.)  As usual I will make my annual plea that BBM please start using photos of the players with their college, high school, corporate league or indy league teams.

This is the first card for most of the players in the set.  The exceptions would be anyone who appeared in any of the JABA corporate league sets between 2021-23 (Giants 2nd round pick Shunya Morita is the only one that I know for sure) or if any of the indy league teams that players were drafted from had cards.  Epoch also issued Epoch One cards for the "regular" phase draft picks for all the teams except the Buffaloes and Carp although it's difficult to determine if those cards came out before the set hit the stores.

Here's some sample cards:

#017

#101

#095

#012

#007

Here's what one of the "2023 Draft Pick" cards looks like:

#122

I'm kind of amused that the back actually lists Shosei Takahashi, the player who didn't sign with the Swallows, but instead of a head shot of him, there's just a note saying "No Photo".  And notice there's no card number for him either:

#122

By the way, I'm totally serious that the reason these cards are in the set is to make sure the number of cards in the set is divisible by three which is driven by the number of draft pick cards.  Last year there were 126 draft pick cards which is evenly divisible by three.  As a result, there was no "Draft Pick" card in the set.  In 2022 there were 128 draft picks so there was only one "Draft Pick" card needed to get to a number divisible by three.  You can look at my retrospective post on 20 years of Rookie Edition sets form a couple years ago to see that this has been going on since 2012.

The "New Face" subset features a young players from each team who hasn't really established himself yet.  Most of the players were drafted in the past few years.

#127

I had gotten the base set off of Yahoo! Japan Auctions through ZenMarket but I also bought a handful of insert cards for the set from my friend Jason.  I've been intrigued by the "Close Relationship" cards that BBM has added in recent year that highlight connections between some of the draftees.  There's a total of eight of these cards this year and I was able to get six of them from Jason.  The connection on six of the cards (four of the ones I got from Jason) was that they all went to the same college.  The other connections were three players who had all been drafted from the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the Shikoku Island League (there were actually six players drafted from that team but the other three were ikusei picks) and a father-son card for Hirobumi and Ryuki Watarai.  Here's the Tokushima Indigo Socks card:

#CR3

I also got a "Starting Point" insert card from Jason.  "Starting Point" has been a standard insert card for the Rookie Edition set for a few years now too.  It features one established player from each of the 12 NPB teams.  I picked up the card for Tsuyoshi Wada who I think is the last active player who was in the first Rookie Edition set in 2003:

#SP09

I'll finish this post with my annual final comments - it's easy to mock it because of the remarkably dull photographs of the draftees posing but I do feel like this is an essential set to get every year and you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.

Topps Now NPB Cards

Topps Japan is now offering Topps Now cards for NPB.  They've got seven cards currently up on their website featuring events from the first couple weeks of the season.  The cards are 1243 yen a piece (about $8) although there are volume discounts if you're buying multiple copies of the same card (although there is no bundle for all seven cards available).  Unlike the MLB version of Topps Now, the NPB cards are on sale for a week.  I guess we'll see if Topps will offer new cards every day or if it'll be a weekly offering (or some other interval).

It appears that Topps will not ship these cards overseas.  I suspect there's something in their NPB license prohibiting them from doing so as they also wouldn't ship the Tigers Championship set overseas but will do so with the Samurai Japan cards.

I'm mildly surprised that Topps appears to have made a little bit of effort on the cards backs.  There's text in both Japanese and English describing what's happening on the card and it's not simply a repeat of the text on the front.  Granted it's not a paragraph like the MLB Topps Now cards have but at least it's not just listing when and where the game happened without even giving the score like the Topps Now Samurai Japan cards have had.

I'm going to be curious which teams they end up doing Topps Now cards for.  There's only four teams represented in the first batch of cards - two Eagles, two Tigers, two Lions and a Dragon.  Will they do cards for more teams?  Will they do cards for teams that Epoch isn't doing Epoch One cards for (which would be the Carp and Buffaloes)?  I'll also be curious to see what events get featured on the cards.  So far, the events on five of the seven Topps Now cards were also featured on Epoch One cards.  Since Epoch is somewhat slow in their rollout of Epoch One cards, it's possible the other two will be represented as well.  

I guess the big question is whether there's a big enough demand for "on demand" NPB cards for both Epoch and Topps to be doing them.  Given that Epoch One cards are only 500 yen, less than half the price of the Topps Now cards and so far are covering the same events, it's hard to see why anyone would want the Topps cards.