I kind of cut back on KBO cards this past year which is somewhat odd considering ESPN's coverage of the league gave it a much higher profile than normal. For me though ESPN's coverage actually made it harder for me to watch the league as we cut the cord several years ago on our DirecTV package so I have no way of watching the channel. And ESPN's contract meant all the ways I normally would watch the league (NaverTV) got blocked.
I also wasn't real impressed by SCC first two KBO card sets last year - the Battle Baseball Card Game Volumes One and Two - as they combined two things I'm not a big fan of - collectible game cards and cards with the player's image is superimposed on a background. That's not to say there aren't examples of either feature that I like but it makes it a harder sell. But I did want to get at least one KBO set for the year so when SCC's Premium set came out in late September I asked Dan if he could pick me up one. He did and it eventually made it's way to me last week (Dan didn't get a chance to ship the set until a few weeks ago) along with some extra goodies from both Dan and George.
The set was well worth the wait as it's very attractive. As usual I just got the base set which contains 200 cards - 20 per team. As is kind of standard for SCC's sets, the cards are split into several different types. Based on what previous sets have had, I think the three types this time are "normal", "holo" and "rare" cards. Don't be confused by the "rare" label, however, as I don't think these cards are short printed. The teams don't have the same number of each type - each team has between 11 and 13 or the "normal" cards, 4 or 5 "holo" cards and 3 or 4 "rare" cards. Each team's cards are numbered separately - the Doosan Bear cards are numbered D01 to D20; the Hanwha Eagles cards are E01 to E20; et cetera.
One of my favorite things about this set is the player's names are on the front of all of them in English. I think this is the first time SCC's done a set with all the cards having English names on the front since their "2017" set (which was actually released in 2018).
As usual there are no foreign players in the set. Also as usual I have no idea how well the set represents the best players in the league. Pretty much every major player I could think of from the KBO is in the set - Kim Ha-Seong, Lee Dae-Ho, Park Byung-Ho, Yang Eui-Ji, Kim Hyun-Soo, Hwang Jae-Gyun, Choi Jeong, Han Dong-Min, Son Ah-Seop and Kim Tae-Kyun. One player is making their licensed KBO card debut - former Hanshin Tiger, St Louis Cardinal, Toronto Blue Jay and Colorado Rockie pitcher Oh Seung-Hwan. Oh had departed for Japan before the first licensed cards were released in Korea in 2014 - the only KBO card I know of for him was in the unlicensed 2010 KBO Game set. He returned to the KBO in 2019 but wasn't able to pitch until a month or so into last season as he needed to serve a six month suspension for going to a casino in Macau in 2014 (it is illegal for a Korean citizen to go to a foreign casino, even in a place where gambling is legal).
Here's some example cards. First up are a trio of "normal" cards:
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| #SCCP1-20/W01 |
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| #SCCP1-20/L05 |
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| #SCCP1-20/T14 |
Next are three "holo" cards. It's a bit hard to tell in the scans but the cards all have a "holo" finish to them:
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| #SCCP1-20/N11 |
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| #SCCP1-20/D10 |
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| #SCCP1-20/K02 |
The backs of all the cards have the same design regardless of whether they are "normal", "holo" or "rare":
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| #SCCP1-20/G14 |
If you want to see what all cards look like, Dan has uploaded images of all of them to the Trading Card Database.
As always, thanks for picking the set up for me, Dan!
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