Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Package From Down Under

I got a package in the mail from Steve Smith yesterday containing a handful of cards from Japan by way of Australia.  Steve lives near Melbourne and is a big fan of the Aces - I think he spent some time working for them.  Since Melbourne has been getting players from the Saitama Seibu Lions almost every season since the Australian Baseball League started back up in 2010 Steve's become a fan of the Lions as well.  Steve sent me some cards he had of the Lions.

First up are two cards from the 2019 BBM Lions set that Steve is trying to complete:

2019 BBM Lions #L53

2019 BBM Lions #L01
Next are three cards from the 2017 Lions Fan Club set:




There were also three cards from a different Lions team issued set that was also from 2017 (which is also different than the one 2017 Lions team issued card I got from Ryan when I was in Tokyo):




And lastly Steve included an Australian card - it's the card for Koo Dae-Sung from last winter's ABL set from Choice.  Koo was the manager for Geelong Korea, one of the two new expansion teams in the ABL last year.  Since the cards apparently went to press before the season started he is shown in a Sydney Blue Sox uniform instead of a Geelong uniform - he'd been coaching for the Blue Sox for a couple years after he retired as a player (he had also played a few seasons with Sydney).  His was the only card for Geelong that actually depicted a person - the other card simply described the team.

2018-19 Choice ABL #76
Thanks for the cards Steve!  I need to put together some cards to send back to you!

2 comments:

Sean said...

That is really interesting. Do they have something similar to the posting system between NPB and the Australian league? Or is this some sort of tie up specific with the Lions?

Steve Smith said...

A few of the club's have have agreements with NPB club's to send players for the first half of the season.
Melbourne Aces - Seibu Lions
Canberra Cavalry - DeNa Baystars
Auckland Tuatara - Chiba Lotte Marines
A couple of Canberra players did spend a little time training with the Baystars but there has yet to be an ABL player sign with an NPB team thru these affiliations.
Previously Yomiuri, Softbank, Hanshin & Rakutan have sent players over as mentioned in previous post by NPB Card Guy