Blog Bat Around - My Projects

Night Owl Cards started a Blog Bat Around a couple weeks ago that asked bloggers to write about their various card collecting projects.  I'm a bit late on this but I thought I jump in on it.

My main card collecting project is the constant acquisition of various new BBM, Calbee and Epoch sets but there's a number of other things that I'm actively working on (although "actively" is a relative term).  Here's the list in order of most likely to get completed to least likely:

2000 Upper Deck Olympics Baseball Team

2000 Upper Deck Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards #216

Back in 2000 Upper Deck released a 264 card set dedicated to the Japanese team for that summer's Olympics in Sydney.  This set included a 19 card subset for the baseball team which included current NPB stars like Daisuke Matsuzaka, So Taguchi, Yukio Tanaka, Norihiro Nakamura and Nobuhiko Matsunaka as well as some corporate league players who would later star in NPB like Norihiro Akahoshi, Toshiya Sugiuchi and Shunsuke Watanabe (but unfortunately not Shinnosuke Abe).  I've been working my way through this subset ever since I first discovered it existed thanks to a post by Ryan over five years ago.  Actually in fairness - Ryan's been working my way through the subset for me and it's kind of cheating for me to include it here because he's actually found the last two cards I needed - I just don't have them in hand yet.  Ryan found my cards while completing the entire 264 set for himself which is a pretty impressive feat.

1978 Yamakatsu JY6 set

1978 Yamakatsu JY6 Sadaharu Oh

I love the cards that Yamakatsu issued in the late 1970's.  One of the more approachable sets was a set issued in 1978 that Engel labels the "JY6" set.  This set has 42 cards in it and is the only set Yamakatsu did that where the cards are close to the standard 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch size - all the others are either smaller or much larger.  There's a good collection of stars in the set including Sachio Kinugasa, Koji Yamamoto, Hisashi Yamada, Yutaka Enatsu, Hiromitsu Kadota, Isao Harimoto and two cards of Sadaharu Oh.  I'm down to only needing one card from the set - Koichi Tabuchi.  I've seen it once on Yahoo! Japan Auctions but I (ok, Ryan) got outbid on it.  But I'm optimistic it can be found.

2017 Topps Now WBC set

2017 Topps Now WBC #W-46

I was disappointed that Topps never really did a set for last year's World Baseball Classic so I decided that I would collect the Topps Now cards that they issued - despite the fact that they're much more expensive than I'd like.  I did a pretty good job picking up the low hanging fruit of cheap-ish cards off of both Ebay and COMC but I'm down to 12 cards that I've only been seeing at $15 apiece and above.  It'll get done eventually but it'll take some time.

2009 Konami WBC Inserts

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC "All Tournament Team" #W09A002

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC "Special" #W09S003

Back in 2009 Konami did an amazing set for the World Baseball Classic - a 253 card base set with two 12 card insert sets.  One insert set was for the All Tournament team and the other was simple labeled "Special" cards.  I had complete the base set a few years ago but I hadn't really planned on getting the inserts.  But the guy I used to buy cards from (including this set) had given me the Darvish and Ichiro "special" cards when I met up with him in Tokyo and I found a couple others for not terrible prices on Ebay so I decided to give it a shot.  I've got most of the "Special" cards (Ryan's got five of them waiting for me) but I still have most of the All Tournament team to get.

2003-06 BBM Rookie Edition sets

2003 BBM Rookie Edition #63

2004 BBM Rookie Edition #61

2005 BBM Rookie Edition #12

2006 BBM Rookie Edition #13

I have the complete Rookie Edition base sets from 2007 to the present but I'd like to finish off the first four editions.  I've used the checklists for the sets on the Trading Card Database to determine how many I need and it's not really that many - 24 cards for 2003, 12 for 2004, 15 for 2005 and 17 for 2006.  And I think I already have all the big names (Aoki from the 2004 set and Darvish from the 2005 set) - probably the biggest name I have left is Hideaki Wakui from the 2005 set.  What I need to do is get the list online and added to my Want List.

2017 Topps TBT WBC cards

2017 Topps "Throwback Thursday" #36

Last year Topps issued six "Throwback Thursday" cards on-line for the WBC.  Each card featured a player from the tournament in their nation's uniform.  The cards used the 1988 Topps baseball design.  I had decided to try to get all of these around the time I decided to get all the Topps Now cards.  Normally I probably wouldn't mention a project this small but I've been somewhat stymied after getting four cards.  Of the remaining two cards one of them (Alex Bregman) I only see for at least $20 on Ebay and I have yet to see the other card (Carlos Correa) anywhere.  So this one may take a while.

1994-2000 BBM flagship sets

1994 BBM #363

1998 BBM #72

I have the complete BBM "flagship" base sets from 1991 to 93 and from 2001 to the present.  I'd like to attempt to complete the other seven sets but some of these would be easier than others.  I'm reasonably close on a couple sets - 1994 (a recent pickup on Ebay has left me 45 cards away) and 1998 (roughly 50 although one of them is Yoshinobu Takahashi) - but I'm a bit further away on the others.  I need anywhere from 120 to 300 cards for the other five sets.  Everything other than the 1995 set is probably do-able - I need the puzzle cards and the Late Series card of Kevin Mitchell from 1995 which pushes the cost up quite a bit.  I haven't quite put together checklists for all the sets yet so I'm not organized enough on these yet to really make an effort on them.

1999 Teleca Sets

1999 Teleca #82

1999 Teleca Premium #14

Teleca issued three KBO sets in 1999 and 2000.  I had opened boxes for two of these sets - the 1999 regular set and the 1999 Premium set.  Through help from Dan, George and Justin, I'm down to just needing one card from the regular set and four cards from the Premium set.  These aren't cards that I'm likely to come by on Ebay or anywhere else so I'll probably need to continue to rely on the Three Amigos of KBO Cards to ever complete these sets.

2000 Teleca "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" insert set

2000 Teleca :'99 Korea Japan Super Games" #KJ42

I'd love to get the 2000 Teleca base set as well but I only have about 14 cards from it so that's just not going to happen.  The 2000 set also has a 46 card insert set for the 1999 Korea-Japan Super Games which features some Japanese players as well as Korean ones.  Thanks to Dan, George and Justin I now have 15 of these cards.  Again the only way I'm going to complete the set is to rely on the kindness of the three of them.