2024 Epoch One cards

As usual, I asked Ryan to pick up a bunch of Epoch One cards for me last year.  In fact, knowing that I was not going to buy any more cards after last season, I probably went a little overboard on what I asked him to get for me.  I had gotten ten of the 2024 cards from him last May when I met up with him in Tokyo and the rest (44 more!) were in the box I got from him about a month ago.

I should mention here that Epoch One is Epoch's version of on demand cards a la Topps Now although they are cheaper (500 yen) and are available for three days.  For whatever reason, they only do cards for ten of the twelve NPB teams, leaving out Orix and Hiroshima (although they've done the Carp in the past and do the Epoch One Signature Sets for them every November).

I usually have a couple possible reasons that I pick up a particular Epoch One card.  It may commemorate an interesting event, feature a player wearing an alternate uniform or just be a photo that I really like.  I've grouped the cards I got from Ryan in different categories for this post, just because I think it'd be a little more interesting than just listing 44 cards one after another.

The first group of cards are for games that I attended on my trip last year.  Ryan and I attended a game between the Lions and Eagles out at Seibu Dome on the first full day of my trip and Epoch did two cards from the game - one for Reon Murata getting a hit in his first ichi-gun at bat and one for Natsuki Takeuchi getting his third straight win without a loss (the first rookie Lions starting pitcher in 43 years to do so):

#396

#397

Four days later, I was in Nagoya for a matchup between the Dragons and Tigers that the Tigers won 1-0 in 11 innings.  Epoch again issued two cards for the game - one for each team.  The Tigers card commemorated Koji Chikamoto getting the game winning hit in the 11th inning while the Dragons card commemorated Mikiya Tanaka getting his first ever stolen base:

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It would be another week before I attended another game that Epoch did cards for - the 21-0 shellacking that the Hawks administered to the Eagles on May 21st in Fukuoka.  Once again, Epoch did two cards - one for Kenta Imamiya hitting two triples in one inning and the other for Ryoya Kurihara getting four hits (including two home runs) and six RBIs:

#445

#446

The next night, I was back in Tokyo, watching the Dragons beat the Giants at Tokyo Dome.  Despite the loss, Epoch did a card for Yomiuri shortstop Hayato Sakamoto, who got his 450th double in the game:

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Fun fact - the only other guy in NPB history to reach 450 doubles was also at the game that night - Dragons manager Kazuyoshi Tatsunami.

The last game I was at that Epoch issued an Epoch One card for was two days later.  On Friday night, I was at the Marines-Hawks game in Chiba and saw Roki Sasaki get his fourth win of the season:

#437

This next batch of cards commemorated specific events that appealed to me.  This first one was for Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh's first game back in NPB since 2019:

#333

Shosei Togo threw a no-hitter against the Tigers at Koshien:

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On June 26th, the Lions and Fighters were tied 2-2 in the bottom of the 12th in Omiya.  With two outs and runners on first and second, Seiya Matsubara, attempting to be the hero of his first game with the Lions after being traded by the Giants, hit what looked like a game winning hit over the (as usual) drawn in outfield.  But Ryota Isobata ran the ball down, making a fantastic over the shoulder catch while falling down at the warning track to end the game:

#624

Two days later, Carter Stewart struck out 13 Fighters in 7 innings in Hokkaido with his parents in attendance:

#633

I'm always a sucker for cards showing pitchers batting so here's a couple:

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I'm kind of amused that Togo's card mentions that he got his first hit of the season in the game that he threw his second shutout of the year.  His first shutout, of course, was the no-hitter.

This next batch of cards all feature alternate uniforms:

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#796

#808

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#841

#848

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You'll notice that some uniforms show up more than once.  That's mostly because I forgot what I'd already asked Ryan to get.

These cards commemorate walk off wins:

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These cards just feature photos that I liked (although the Takeya Nakamura card also celebrates a rare stolen base by the slugger):

#325

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I got these next two cards because I wasn't sure either plsyer would be in BBM issues.  It turned out that I needn't have worried - Keuchel was in Fusion and Downs was in the Hawks - Fly Again box set.  The one I should have been concerned about was Mike Ford of the Baystars who did not have a BBM base set card:

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I'm going to be honest, I'm not entirely sure why I asked Ryan to pick up these next two cards.  I think the big reason was simply that I wanted to make sure I got at least one card of an Eagles player:

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I'm not sure if I've picked up any Epoch One cards for the All Star games previously but there were a couple I couldn't resist last year.  The Fighters hosted the first game as part of the 50th anniversary of Nippon-Ham buying the team before the 1974 season and they had their representatives at the game wear a variety of the team's uniforms from over the years:

#753

Bizarrely, pitcher Sachiya Yamasaki actually batted in the game, so I had to get the card that commemorated that, especially since he was wearing the harlequin alternate uniform from 2023:

#752

The second game was played the next day at Jingu Stadium in Tokyo.  Kensuke Kondoh won the pregame home run hitting contest:

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This last card from the All Star games is for Ryuki Watarai getting his first All Star hit and RBI with his father (former Swallow Hirofumi Watari) in attendance.  Not really sure why I asked Ryan to get it - probably just because I wanted a card from the game:

#759

The last batch of cards were from the post season.  There's one from each league's Climax Series and one from the Nippon Series.  The Sasaki card commemorates his last game in NPB before leaving for MLB:

#1132

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#1184

There's one more card I want to share but this isn't one of the "professional baseball" Epoch One cards.  It instead is one of their "Event" Epoch One cards.  It looks like there's a bunch of cards issued for kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa but the one I got was for "Shigeo Nagashima Day" last May.  It shows Nagashima with Hideki Matsui and Giants manager Shinnosuke Abe:

2024 Epoch One Events #014

At 377, the Fighters All Star card had the biggest print run of any of these cards (with the exception of the Nagashima card which was 450 but, as I said, not a "professional baseball" Epoch One card).  The lowest was the Ryoya Kurihara card with only 17.  The three Sasaki cards were all in the upper 200's.  Most of the rest of the cards had print runs less than 100.

Card Of The Week August 24

Koki Yamaguchi of the Marines had a couple good nights last week against the Eagles.  On Wednesday night, he hit a three run home run in the bottom of the seventh, breaking a 2-2 tie and providing the margin of victory in Lotte's 5-3 win.  In his next at bat, in the first inning of the next day's game, he hit a two run home run.  Three innings later, he hit another two run home run.  In his next at bat, in the same inning, he hit yet another home run - a two run shot that capped off the Marines nine run fourth inning.  That put the Marines up 11-1 and ended up again providing the margin of victory in a game where the Eagles managed to claw back to make a game of it before Lotte held on for a 12-10 win.

Yamaguchi was the 15th player in NPB history to hit home runs in four consecutive at bats but was also the first one to do it with runners on base each time.  He was the 22nd player to hit two home runs in an inning. (H/T NPB Reddit)

This was not the first time Yamaguchi hit three home runs in one game.  He also did it back in 2022 against the Buffaloes in Osaka.  At 22 years and one month of age at the time, he was the youngest player in either league or team history to do it.  The event was commemorated in the 2022 BBM Fusion set (#94):

2023 Epoch One Promo Cards

Another one of the unexpected things that Ryan sent me was a handful of promos for the 2023 Epoch One cards.  Until I saw these, I had no idea that there were promo versions of Epoch One cards.  Here's the five cards he sent me:

You might be asking yourself, "why is he calling an Epoch One promo card for an event in 2022 a 2023 card?"  That's because the back of the card shows a copyright date of 2023.  All the card backs are identical, except for the photo and team name:

These backs are very similar to those of the "regular" 2023 Epoch One cards:

The big difference on the backs, besides the lack of a card number and the promo information at the bottom of the card, is that the promo cards lack Epoch's watermark.  The fronts, however, look exactly the same as the non-promo version of the card (none of which I have).