NPB Down Under Part 2

I did a post a few months back featuring a bunch of cards of NPB players in Australian Baseball League uniforms.  In that post I had mentioned a handful of other cards of NPB players* that I knew about but didn't have (including one that Steve Smith told me about that I had missed).  I have since picked up these other cards so I thought I'd share them.

*I should probably point out that when I say "NPB Player" what I really mean is "Japanese NPB Player".  There are ABL cards of former NPB players like Mitch Dening and Chris Oxspring but I'm not as interested in them.

I previously showed eight cards from the two 2012 Brisbane Bandits team issued sets that featured the five players loaned to the Bandits during the 2011-12 season from the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks - Kenta Imamiya, Taisei Makihara, Keiji Nakahara, Ayatsugu Yamashita and Yohei Yanagawa.  Imamiya, Yamashita and Yanagawa each had an All Star card in the second set to go along with the individual player cards.  There were two additional cards in the second set featuring the players.  First is a card showing the members of the Bandits who were named to the All Star Game in December of 2011:

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #054

From left to right is Justin Eramus, Alex Maestri, Yanagawa, Imamiya, Paul Gonzalez (Bandits GM), Yamashita and Josh Roberts.

The other card is for Yamashita and is labeled "Non-Stop Action!".  It shows a play at the plate between Yamashita and Travis Scott of the Canberra Cavalry in the game on November 6, 2001.  Here's the front and back of the card:

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #057

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #057

Speaking of the Canberra Cavalry, the 2011-12 edition of the team featured five players on loan from the Hanshin Tigers - Takumi Akiyama, Fumiya Araki, Yuhei Kai, Daiki Kiyohara and Masashi Nohara.  Akiyama was included in the Cavalry's 2012 team set from Select.  Here's that card and a recent card of him with the Tigers:

2012 Select #26

2017 Epoch Tigers #14

The Saitama Seibu Lions and Melbourne Aces have had a long partnership that's seen a number of Lions players (including a couple big names in Yusei Kikuchi and Tomoya Mori) spend time in Victoria.  Since I'm a Lions fan I was hoping for some crossover but as far as I've been able to tell (with help from Steve) there's only been one Lions player who's appeared on an ABL card - Toshihiro Iwao was included in the 2013-14 set from Dingo.  Here's his card along with a card of him from the Lions:

2013-14 Dingo #060

2017 BBM Lions #L19

Steve passed on an interesting piece of trivia - "Dingo" cards is owned by former MLB star (and one time Chunichi Dragon) Dave Nilsson along with his brother Gary and (Steve thinks) Paul Gonzalez, the Bandits GM mentioned above.

Kenshi Sugiya of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters spent a couple weeks with the Brisbane Bandits during the 2017-18 ABL season.  He was included in a team issued set put out by the Bandits in 2018.  He actually has two cards in the set - a base set card and a premium card.  I only got the base set card which I'm showing here along with an NPB card of his from later in 2018:

2018 Brisbane Bandits Team Set

2018 BBM Fighters #F44

I wanted to show one more card.  I mentioned that I've only really been interested in finding cards of Japanese players in the ABL.  There was one exception to this.  Former KBO, NPB and MLB pitcher Koo Dae-Sung was a fixture with the Sydney BlueSox for a number of years - first as an active player for five seasons from 2010-11 to 2014-15 and then as their pitching coach for a couple seasons - before taking over as manager of the Geelong Korea team this past season.  The 2012 BlueSox set from Select is apparently the only set to include a card of Koo with Sydney.  Here's that card along with both a KBO and an NPB card of him:

2012 Select #66

1999 Teleca #151

2001 BBM Late Series #603

I want to mention that I picked up all of these ABL cards as well as the ones in my previous post from Shane who sells on Ebay under the name Top-Flite-79.  Shane carries a lot of ABL cards and cards of Australian MLB players so check him out if you're looking for cards from Down Under.