Sports Card Magazine #111

Sports Card Magazine #111 was published yesterday in Japan and somehow a copy made its way to my door by early afternoon today.  Like most issues, this one is a bit of a hit or miss on its usefulness to non-Japanese speakers but I still enjoyed it.

The cover story this issue is for BBM's 25th Anniversary.  There's a three page article that appears to go year by year through BBM's history - I don't know what the text says but each year is illustrated by a significant card, not all of which are baseball.  Here's the list:

1991: Hideo Nomo flagship card
1992: Hiromitsu Ochiai hologram insert
1993: Ichiro Suzuki rookie card
1994: Hiroki Kokubo rookie card
1995: Pro wrestling card (can't read name)
1996: Tomonori Maeda Diamond Heroes Run Producers insert
1997: Hideki Matsui Diamond Heroes Jersey insert
1998: Sumo wrestling card (can't read name)
1999: Tsuyoshi Shinjyo Diamond Heroes Game Used Bat insert
2000: Sadaharu Oh 20th Century Best 9 card
2001: Shigeo Nagashima All Time Heroes card
2002: Michihiro Ogasawara & Kosuke Fukudome Touch The Game Combo Game Used Bat insert
2003: Tsuyoshi Nishioka Rookie Edition Signature Parallel card
2004: Hisashi Iwakuma Buffaloes Jersey insert
2005: Norichika Aoki Touch The Game Game Used Bat insert
2006: Yasuhiro Ichiba, Daisuke Matsuzaka & Satoru Kanemura Touch The Game Buttons insert
2007: Masahiro Tanaka Rookie Edition Premium card
2008: Yuki Saitoh Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version card
2009: Miwa Asao (Beach Volleyball) Real Venus card
2010: Yu Darvish 1st Version Cross Stream card
2011: Riho Sugiura Dancing Heroine card
2012: Hayato Sakamoto Genesis Elite Of Nine insert
2013: Kenta Maeda Classic Jersey insert
2014: Katsuya Nomura Hawks Achievement Autograph insert
2015: Kazuhiro Kiyohara Masters Of Insert Autograph insert

The article also showed the 1991 cards of the three players included in that set that are still active.  Can you guess who they are?  I'll give the answer at the end of the post.

There are full page color ads for the just released or soon to be released team sets for the Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Tigers, Marines and Baystars.  There's a two page ad for this year's Classic set and single page ads for the latest J-League (Soccer), Chic (Sumo) and Dancing Heroine Hana sets.  The checklists for each of these sets appear in the "New Card List" in the "newsprint" section of the magazine.

Their list of "Best Cards" for the issue is:

Best Card Of This Month:  2015 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani autograph card
Best Item Of This Month:  2015 BBM 1st Version

Hot Card Lists
Rookies:
1. 2015 BBM 1st Version Kazuma Okamoto (#186)
2. 2015 BBM 1st Version Takayoshi Noma (#237)
3. 2015 BBM 1st Version Hayato Takagi (#188)
4. 2015 BBM 1st Version Daiki Osama (#075)
5. 2015 BBM 1st Version Shun Lin Haru (#111)
6. 2015 BBM 1st Version Kona Takahashi (#131)
7. 2013 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani (#183)
8. 2015 BBM 1st Version Tomohiro Anaraku (#156)
9. 2015 BBM 1st Version Yasuaki Yamasaki (#291)
10. 1993 BBM Ichiro Suzuki (#239)

Autograph & Memorabilia:
1. 2015 Epoch Tigers Nippon Champions 1985 Randy Bass, Masayuki Kakefu & Akinobu Okada autograph card
2. 2015 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani autograph card
3. 2015 BBM Horizon Sho Nakata & Shohei Ohtani autograph card
4. 2015 BBM Horizon Shohei Ohtani autograph card
5. 2015 BBM Icons - Aces Daisuke Matsuzaka autograph card
6. 2015 BBM 1st Version Daisuke Matsuzaka & Hirko Kuroda Combo Jersey card
7. 2015 BBM 1st Version Daisuke Matsuzaka autograph card
8. 2015 BBM Icons - Aces Kona Takahashi autograph card
9. 2014-15 Japan National Team Keisuke Honda autograph card
10. 2015 BBM Icons - Aces Tomohiro Anaraku autograph card

In the newsprint section of the magazine, there's some sort of 25 question quiz dealing with BBM cards (one question per year).  I think it's a contest as I don't see the quiz answers in the issue anywhere.  The quiz shows what the unopened box for each flagship or 1st Version set looks like.  There's also an article that looks like it's four people doing breaks of 2015 1st Version boxes and showing off their top cards and an article on the BITS card shop in Nagoya (that Ryan has visited).  The section also contained the Calbee Series Two checklist (that just went on Calbee's web site in the last couple days) - this does not appear in the "New Card List" section but rather in the "New Release Information" section that mostly seems to have information on US cards.  The checklist and price guide section is dedicated to soccer cards.

I noticed a couple interesting items in the "Street News" section - apparently BBM has produced fan club sets for the Hawks and the Buffaloes.  There are checklists for both sets - the Hawks set has 86 cards while the Buffaloes set only has 40 (that appears to be split into two 20 card groups).  The articles referenced a website for each set but I was only able to find information on the Buffaloes set.   (The Hawks link was just for their on-line shop.)

I was very disappointed in the insert cards in this issue.  As has been usual for the last year and a half, there were 12 cards included - 10 were for the Dancing Heroine - Hana (cheerleader) set and the other two were promo cards from the Chic Sumo set.  I'm pretty sure that the cheerleader cards are bonus cards to the set and not promos - they don't look like the ones in the set's ad in the magazine and they don't have non-SCM card numbers:

The Sumo cards are definitely promo cards as they appear to differ only in color from cards shown in the ad for the set:

The three players who appeared in the 1991 BBM set who are still active are Motonobu Tanishige, Masahiro Yamamoto and Satoshi Nakajima.  Don't beat yourself up if you missed Nakajima - he's only had 10 at bats at the ichi-gun level total since 2007.  He hasn't had a BBM flagship card since 2008.  He spends most of his time with the Fighter's ni-gun team.  He is the last Hankyu Brave still active.