Sunday, February 10, 2019

Card Of The Week February 10

I've written in the past about the Japanese Collegiate All Star cards that were an insert in the 2008 Upper Deck USA Baseball box set.  There were several different varieties of memorabilia cards for the members of the Japanese team for the 2007 Japan-USA College Baseball Tournament - jersey, patch, letter, autograph and flag patch.  I have all 22 of the jersey cards but I didn't have any of the other cards until recently.  I picked up an autographed card of Shirou Mori for a very low price on Ebay a couple weeks back:


Mori never played in NPB - he attended Kinki University and played in the corporate leagues for Matsushita Electric/Panasonic* after graduating.  If this is to be believed (and is kept updated) he played for Panasonic from 2008 to 2014.

*Matsushita Electric changed their name to Panasonic as of October 1, 2008

6 comments:

SumoMenkoMan said...

Cool card. Is that a sticker auto, or did he just sign off centered?

NPB Card Guy said...

It's not a sticker. The card is extra thick, like it was put together in multiple layers. I suspect he signed the lower layer and the upper layer (with the opening to see the autograph through) was put on afterwards. (I also suspect that there's some common term for this in card circles but I don't know what it is.) In this particular case the autograph didn't quite fit into the window.

Fuji said...

Lol. I remember building the jersey set. Clicked on your link and was soon reminded that I paid $25 for the Yuki Saito jersey card. Had to double check, so I downloaded my COMC purchase history and there it was. $27.92. That has to be one of the worst purchases I've made since I've returned to the hobby.

NPB Card Guy said...

@Fuji - If it makes you feel any better I think I spent $30 on that card.

Fuji said...

Was Saito suppose to be the next big thing or what? What possessed us to pay so much money for this card?

NPB Card Guy said...

Oh Lordy, yes indeed Saitoh was once believed to the next great thing. He had an epic performance in the 2006 Koshien tournament including a 15 inning match up against Masahiro Tanaka in the title game which ended in a tie - I've written about it a couple times in the past both in 2013 and in 2018. He was hugely popular after this. I believe the Upper Deck card was his first baseball card ever. I've been convinced for years that BBM only did collegiate sets from 2008 to 2013 so that they could make collegiate cards for him.