Sports Card Magazine #118

Sports Card Magazine #118 was published in Japan on Wednesday last week (July 27th).  I think my issue showed up on my door on Thursday but since we were on vacation, I didn't actually see it until yesterday.  Here's the summary:

Color Section:
- Interview with Shota Imanaga of the Baystars, including a gallery of all his BBM cards so far (since he's a rookie, there's only 9 - including his 2nd version cards which won't be released until next week)
- Two page article on the "First Pitch Ceremony" subsets from 2004-2016.  Includes many card images and a complete checklist of all subsets (including bonus SCM cards)
- Ads for 2nd Version set (2 pages), Dragons and Hawks team sets (1 page each), Classic (1 page), Tigers and Lions Autographed Edition box sets (1/2 page each), J-League teams sets(?) (2 pages) and Dancing Heroine - Mai (1 page)

Monthly "Bests":
Best Card Of This Month:  2016 BBM Go Higher Shohei Ohtani Autograph card
Best Item Of This Month:  2016 BBM  Go Higher box set

Hot Card Lists
Rookies:
1. 2016 BBM 1st Version Shun Takayama (#238)
2. 2016 BBM 1st Version Louis Okoye (#156)
3. 2016 BBM 1st Version Shota Imanaga (#318)
4. 2016 BBM 1st Version Taiga Hirosawa (#075)
5. 2016 BBM 1st Version Eigoro Mogi (#158)
6. 2013 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani (#183)
7. 2016 BBM 1st Version Juri Hara (#184)
8. 2016 BBM 1st Version Shinnosuke Shigenobu (#210)
9. 1993 BBM Ichiro Suzuki (#239)
10. 2016 BBM 1st Version Junpei Takahashi (#022)

Autograph & Memorabilia:
1. 2016 BBM Fighters Shohei Ohtani Autograph card
2. 2016 BBM Go Higher Shohei Ohtani Autograph card
3. 2016 BBM Go Higher Shohei Ohtani Patch card
4. 2016 BBM Tigers Shun Takayama Autograph card
5. 2016 BBM Go Higher Shohei Ohtani/Shintaro Fujinami Autograph card
6. 2016 BBM Dancing Heroine - Hana Aki Autograph card
7. 2016 BBM Go Higher Shohei Ohtani "Rivals" insert card
8. 2016 BBM Carp Hiroki Kuroda Autograph card
9. 2016 BBM Swallows Tetsuto Yamada Autograph card
10. 2016 J-League Mai Sato Autograph card

"Newsprint" Section:
- BBM Rookie card ranking (2 pages).  The full list has about 70 entries but the top 19 are actually shown.  The rankings are done by card value.  They are:
1. Ichiro Suzuki (1993 #239) 10,000 yen
2. Hideki Matsui (1993 #423) 9000 yen
3. Hideo Nomo (1991 #379) 5000 yen
4. Tomonori Maeda (1991 #14) 4000 yen
5. Yu Darvish (2005 #116) 3000 yen
5. Masahiro Tanaka (2007 #211) 3000 yen
5. Shohei Ohtani (2013 #183) 3000 yen
8. Tomoaki Kanemoto (1994 #363) 2000 yen
8. Kazuo Matsui (1994 #506) 2000 yen
8. Hayato Sakamoto (2007 #352) 2000 yen
8. Tetsuto Yamada (2011 #265) 2000 yen
12. Hiroki Kuroda (1997 #496) 1500 yen
12. Yoshinobu Takahashi (1998 #345) 1500 yen
12. Daisuke Matsuzaka (1999 #413) 1500 yen
12. Kenta Maeda (2007 #391) 1500 yen
12. Yuki Yanagita (2011 #024) 1500 yen
17. Hiroki Kokubo (1994 #531) 1200 yen
17. Yusuke Nomura (2012 #294) 1200 yen
17. Shintaro Fujinami (2013 #130) 1200 yen
- Article on the "Rookie Reprint" cards from the 2016 BBM Classic set (only two of which are on the above list - Matsuzaka and Kuroda)
- Box Break Contest - four collectors each open a box of 2016 BBM Swallows and 2016 BBM Dancing Heroine - Hana and are rated on what they pulled
- New Card List contains checklists for the Classic, Hawks, Dragons, 2nd Version, Lions and Tigers Autograph Edition, Dancing Heroine - Mai and J-League team sets.
- "Vintage" Checklist and Price Guide is for non-BBM baseball sets (as well as recent sets for all sports)

SCM Original Cards:
Dancing Heroine - Mai bonus cards for ikumin, Asuka, Yuka, Yuiri Kurimoto, Moemi and Rina Fujii

SCM #379

SCM #375

Notes:

- I have no idea why there are two lists of top rookie cards that are complete different.  The "hot list" is always dominated by recent cards so it's probably more driven by what people are currently looking for while the other list is strictly by book value.  That said, Yusuke Nomura seems overrated on the top 70 list.

- I got the gold signature parallel for Asuka's card

- It always seems odd to me when the "Best Card Of The Month" is not the top card in the "Autograph & Memorabilia" Hot List.  How can it be the best card but not be #1 on the hot list?