2019 SCC KBO Collection 2

SCC issued a set of cards for the KBO back in October.  This is their third set for the year following the KBO Collection set in June and the Premium set in August.  This set is entitled KBO Collection 2.  Dan Skrezyna picked it up for me and sent it to me a few weeks ago.

As is pretty standard for the SCC KBO sets, the 200 cards of the base set are split into five different varieties - I wouldn't call them subsets as each of these types really represents the "regular" card for players.  There are 89 "normal" cards (9 per team except that SK only has 8), 40 "rare" cards (four per team), 30 "holo" cards (3 per team), 21 "All Star" cards (2 per team except for SK which has 3) and 20 "signature" cards (2 per team) which feature facsimile signatures.  That works out to 20 cards total for each of the 10 KBO teams.

In addition to the base set, there's also two varieties of autograph cards - there's 89 different autograph cards and 15 different "red autograph" cards.  All cards of each flavor are serially numbered to 12.  There's also a parallel version of the All Star cards (called "All Star Rare") that are each serially numbered to 77.

This all sounds pretty straight forward but the set's checklist is actually kind of confusing.  The set is numbered from 1 to 200.  Each card number represents a distinct player.  I know you're thinking "So?  Isn't that how all sets are done?"  Well, yes, but the key thing here is that there are multiple cards for some players that all have the same number!

Let's pick an example - Kang Baek-Ho of the KT Wiz is card #179 in the set.  He has three different cards in the set that all have that number on it - a "red autograph" card, a "normal" card and an "All Star" card (ok, technically he has FOUR cards in the set since he's got an "All Star Rare" card as well but it's not unusual for the parallel card to have the same number as the regular card - in fact that's kind of the definition of parallel card, isn't it?).  There's no suffix on the card number to differentiate the cards.  Here's his "normal" and "All Star" cards to illustrate this:

So this brings up the other confusing thing about the set - Kang is one of 33 players who has two cards in the base set.  The implication of this is that there's only 167 unique players in the base set so there's only 167 card numbers that appear in the base set.  33 players who appear in the set ONLY have autographed cards - they're not in the base set at all.  Most (but not all) of the players who have more than one card in the set have a "normal", "rare" or "holo" card as well as an "All Star" or "Signature" card but the reverse is not true - there are a couple players who have an "All Star" or "Signature" card but don't have any other base cards.  Two players with SK are exceptions in the two card examples - Ha Jae-Hoon has a "normal" and a "holo" card and Han Dong-Min has an "All Star" AND a "Signature" card.

I don't envy the task that Dan had putting the checklist for this set together on TradingCardDB.com.  He ended up treating the "Normal" cards as the base set and labeling the other flavors as "Inserts And Related Sets".

As usual, there's no foreign players in the set.  Also as usual I can't speak to who's missing in the set as I don't know the KBO very well.  The four players who played in MLB a few years back - Lee Dae-Ho, Park Byung-Ho, Kim Hyun-Soo and Hwang Jae-Gyun - are all in the set along with one time Chiba Lotte Marine Kim Tae-Kyun.

The highlight of this set is the "All Star" cards.  The photos on the cards were taken at the All Star Game festivities back in July.  There's several that just show the player holding up some sort of signature paper (like Kang's above) but some of the others show the player taking part in skills competitions (I think) like this one of Jung Eun-Won of Hanwha:

#SCCR2-19/056

There are also several cards showing players wearing various costumes at the Home Run Derby.  Since there's no foreign players there's no card of Jamie Romak dressed as Douglas MacArthur (Romacarthur) but there is a card of Choi Jeong of SK dressed as a factory worker with "Home Run Factory Owener" across his back:

#SCCR2-19/013

There's also a card of Lee Hak-Ju of Samsung wearing...something:

#SCCR2-19/115

As you can tell, the "All Star" cards have the player's name in English.  It's in English on the "Holo" and "Autograph" cards as well but the "Normal" and "Rare" cards only have the names in Korean.  Here's examples of the other card types:

#SCCR2-19/126 (Kim Keun-Kook)

#SCCR2-19/011 (Lee Jae-Won)

#SCCR2-19/036 (Choi Joo-Hwan)

#SCCR2-19/151 (Yoo Kang-Nam)

#SCCR2-19/077

#SCCR2-19/186

#SCCR2-19/086

As usual, the backs of the cards are identical:

I want to thank Dan for getting the set for me!