Wednesday, September 15, 2010

2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version


I love AmiAmi. I paid for this set last Friday and the post office attempted to deliver it on Monday. I wasn't able to drop by the post office and pick it up until today. So five days from paying for it to in my hands. Not bad at all.

Anyway, on the the set. The 2010 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version set is a 37 card box set containing 30 "regular" cards for players from the six universities (five per team), 6 team cards and one insert card.

The cards look pretty much similar to the other Tokyo Big 6 sets - full bleed photos with name, position and team name all at the bottom of the card. Deanna commented the other day that she wasn't real impressed with the photography in the set, but I don't see a marked drop off in the photo quality from the other sets, with the possible exception of this card of Kenya Okabe (#19):


That may be one of the most unflattering pictures I've ever seen on a baseball card. It looks like he's got a pillow under his jersey.

(I do agree with Deanna that her pictures are better.)

Here's a couple other cards from the set. I think this card of Kanji Kawai (#29) is pretty amazing - the ball looks like it's just sitting on the bat. And (according to Deanna) the guy coming up behind Daisuke Takeuchi (#01) is Koji FukutaniHitoshi Fuchigami - I wonder if this shot is from Takeuchi's nohitter last spring. The other cards are Fumiya Araki (#15) and the Toyko team card (#36):





There's a 10 card insert set - you get one card from it in the box. I find the theme of the insert set kind of odd - it's something like "Spring Player Awards" but nine of the ten cards are the Best 9 winners from the spring and the other is Kazuki Mishima, the Spring ERA leader. And I only know that because that's the one I got (#SP10):


Nine of the ten players in the insert set appear in the regular set - the only one who doesn't is Takayuki Matsuo of Keio (who hasn't been in a Big 6 set since the first Spring one in 2008).

UPDATE - Deanna's got a post up about the set now too. It is really cool that she's got the Kawai picture from the opposite side. I'm trying to figure out who took the BBM picture - probably the guy on the left.

2 comments:

Deanna said...

OMG I would totally trade you for the Mishima card (he's a favorite player of mine, we have the same birthday and we always chat after Hosei games, he's a really funny guy) but the one I got is Koichiro Matsumoto, no idea if that is interesting to you or not.

And yeah, it is the 9 best nines and then Mishima was added for the ERA award. The batting champ was Yuya Watanabe and he was already on the Best 9.

The guy coming up behind Takeuchi is actually Hitoshi Fuchigami (I am fairly sure that is what I said, not Fukutani), which led to the joke about him still being in the set even though he doesn't have a card of his own.

Matsuo-kun is a very very interesting case. He's a pretty good player but he has never been a STELLAR player per se if that makes any sense, and even now he still gets pulled for defensive replacements all the time. So he's rarely seen as a Keio "star" per se, and I don't blame them at all for the 5 they did pick, Takeuchi and Fukutani are the current solid starters, Yumoto is the captain, Itoh is the best pure hitter in the Tokyo Big 6 league, and Nagasaki is a two-time Best 9 catcher (although, despite that I adore him and think he's a great guy, I still don't think he's the best catcher in the Big 6... he is the best-hitting catcher currently though)

And thanks for allowing me to indulge in my photography egotism ;)

I have a post half-written about this set too and oddly the photo of the two cards that I took were ALSO of Kawai-kun and of my insert card, but with Kawai the case is more that he's my favorite rookie, I saw him hit a walk-off homer to win a game at Koshien last year and was psyched when he came to Hosei! And I was at the game where his card photo was taken and have my own version from almost the exact opposite angle :)

NPB Card Guy said...

> The guy coming up behind Takeuchi is actually Hitoshi Fuchigami (I am fairly sure that is what I said, not Fukutani), which led to the joke about him still being in the set even though he doesn't have a card of his own.

Yes, you did have it right - in my haste to get this post done, I grabbed the wrong name.