Nippon-Ham Home Run Sausage Cards

For the past four years Nippon-Ham, the owners of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, has teamed up with BBM to produce "Home Run Sausage" cards.  Nippon-Ham had originally done cards for the entire NPB back in the late 1970's but the recent cards have only been for the Fighters.

I had a couple of these cards already - Dani had given me a 2016 one a few years back, Ryan had sent me a 2018 one earlier this year and I had picked up a couple Shohei Ohtani cards from 2016 and 2017 off Ebay a while back - but I was hoping to find a few more on the trip.  The only place I saw any was Wrappers in Tokyo.  They had cards from each year for 300 yen apiece.

The 2016 set contained 144 cards although it was numbered to 146 - two of the numbers were not issued because the corresponding player had been traded.  The cards were issued in at least two series - I think the first series had 67 cards (but was numbered to 69) while the other series had 77 cards.  There were also two "Rare" subsets - a 25 card "We Love Hokkaido" subset and a 20 card "Legend" subset.  I picked up one 2016 card - I believe this card is from the second series:

#2016N-84

The 2017 set also had 144 cards and also had two cards removed because of players being traded away so again the cards were numbered 1-146.  Again I believe the set was issued in two Series with both of them containing 72 cards - the first series was 1-72 while the second was 73-146 (with the two missing cards).  There were three "Rare" subsets this time - "We Love Hokkaido" (28 cards), "Legend" (12 cards) and "Hokkaido Be Ambitious" (20 cards).  Again I just picked up one 2017 card from the second series:

#2017-N126

Nippon-Ham changed it up a tiny bit for 2018 as the set contained 145 cards although once again two cards were removed due to players being traded so the set was numbered 1 to 147.  The first series was 72 cards (but numbered to 74) while the second series was 73.  There were only two "Rare" subsets - "We Love Hokkaido" (25 cards although numbered to 26 due to a card being removed for a traded player) and "Hokkaido Be Ambitious" (18 cards).  I bought three cards from this set - one from the first series, one from the second series and one from the "Hokkaido Be Ambitious" subset:

#2018-N06

#2018-N134

#2018-R39

It's kind of interesting that the card design changed between the two series - that didn't happen in the previous years.

For this year so far Nippon-Ham has only issued the first series of cards.   It's got 76 cards and there are no cards removed for traded players as both Yohei Kagiya and Takahiro Fujioka appear in the set although I would assume they will both be removed from the second series.  There are also no "Rare" card subsets yet.  Wrappers was selling the 2019 cards but I didn't buy any there - I went to a Fighters farm team game in Kamagaya on my last full day in Japan and I got the cards directly from the source.

Nippon-Ham gives the cards away with two different products - "Home Run Sausage" and some sort of "rare cheesecake" (according to Deanna Rubin).  I think these products are available in stores in Hokkaido but in the Tokyo area the only place you get them is Kamagaya.  Each product is 300 yen - I bought two packages of the sausage and one of the cheesecake at the game (the sausage package is on the left, the cheesecake is on the right):

Deanna had warned me that the sausage was pretty disgusting but I had to try it for myself - she was right.  They even look gross:

The cheesecake wasn't too bad - I wish I'd gotten two of it and only one of the sausage.  No, actually that's not true - I wish I'd gotten three of the cheesecake and none of the sausage...

Here's the three 2019 cards I got:

#2019-N04

#2019-N32

#2019-N44

The checklists for all four years worth of cards can be found here.

One thing that I've liked about these cards is that since the photos on the first series cards are taken during the early part of spring training a lot of them were actually taken in Arizona.  Of this group of cards the 2018 Arihara card and all three 2019 cards features photos taken in Arizona.  I had once hoped to be able to buy a complete 2016 set but I don't think I've ever seen one for sale on Yahoo! Japan Auctions.  At 300 yen a card (for commons) a complete set would run in the neighborhood of at least $400 so I think I will just have to settle for a handful of singles.