Showing Off

I'm trying to get myself organized following the trip - trying to figure out the best way I should post stuff about it.  I thought I'd start with a This Card Is Cool style post showing off some of the coolest cards that I picked up during this trip.

I was pleased to discover how much old Calbee was available.  There were several different stores that had it on sale and the prices really weren't super expensive.  I think the highest I paid for any one card was 2000 yen.  Here's some of the highlights:

1973 Calbee #7 - Sadaharu Oh

1973 Calbee #37 - Isao Shibata, Shigeru Takada and Toshimitsu Suetsugu

1973 Calbee #27 - Takashi Yoshida

1975/76 Calbee #361 - Isao Harimoto

1975/76 Calbee #293 - Senichi Hoshino

1975/76 Calbee #1067 - Davey Johnson

1979 Calbee April-June Pacific League Stars OF-2 - Charlie Manuel 

1991 Calbee #121 - Hiroki Nomura and Motonobu Tanishige

Other cards from the 70's, 80's and 90's were also available:

1975 NST #171 - Katsuya Nomura

1975-76 Nippon Ham - Kyosuke Sasaki

1978 Yamakatsu JY10 - Koji Yamamoto

1981 Yamakatsu "Young Giants" - Tatsunori Hara

1989 Lotte #40 - Hiromitsu Kadota

1994 Kanebo Gold Card # 027 - Norihiro Komada

BBM singles from all years were available, depending on the store, including these rookie cards:

1994 BBM #124 - Daisuke Miura

1995 BBM # 554 - Atsunori Inaba

I bought a magazine about the Hankyu Braves put out by BBM a few years ago.  When I was leafing through it in my hotel room that night, I discovered that BBM had included four promo cards for the 2011 Legend Of The Bs set.  What was really cool about them is that not only did they have facsimile gold signatures on them, but they had different pictures than the cards in the actual set:

2011 BBM Legend Of The Bs #B4 - Yutaka Fukumoto

While leaving Seibu Dome, I noticed a capsule machine at the train station selling baseball cards.  I put my 300 yen in and was rewarded with a capsule containing three small baseball cards and a little frame with a chain attached.  The cards appear to be published by Epoch and one card can be slid into the frame to make a key chain.  They are called "Trading Carp Plate" (TCP) and are apparently available for all 12 teams.

2012 Epoch TCP #SL-02 - Hiroyuki Hakajima

I saved what I felt was the coolest card for last.  At a store in Jinbocho that had tons of old books and magazines lining the shelves and floor and some binders filled with amazing old baseball cards, I found a 1950 uncatalogued (as far as I can tell anyway) bromide card of Yukichi Nagatoshi.  What's cool about this card is that Nagatoshi is a member of the Nishi Nippon Pirates, a Central Leage team that only existed in 1950, the first year of the two league system in Japan.  Following the season, they merged with the Nishitetsu Clippers of the Pacific League to become the Nishitetsu Lions, now known as the Saitama Seibu Lions.  I was aware that the Pirates had existed, but I had never seen a picture of a Pirates player until now:

1950 Unknown Bromide - Yukichi Nagatoshi

I plan to do some posts on the card shops and the ballparks I went to over the next week or so.