Monday, September 12, 2022

2021 BBM Glory Roki Sasaki - Is It A Rookie Card?

I came across an auction on Ebay recently for a "Glorious 3D" insert card for Roki Sasaki from the 2021 BBM Glory set.  The seller labeled it as a "rookie card" which I pretty much ignored since many sellers list ANY Japanese baseball card for a player as their "rookie card".  But when I looked a little more closely at the card itself I noticed BBM had labeled it a rookie card by putting their little "rookie" icon on the back.

Here's the front and back of the card (I swiped the images from the auction):



I did a post recently that listed all of Roki Sasaki's rookie cards.  I pointed out that he was drafted in the fall 2019 NPB draft so all his rookie cards were published in 2020.  Here's the hair splitting part of the question - the set this card is part of was published in December of 2020 but has a  "cover date" of 2021!  You can see the "cover date" on the back of the card - it's the little icon below the "rookie" symbol that says "BBM 2021" as well as the text towards the bottom identifying the set as "BBM Baseball Cards Premium 2021 [Glory]".  Of course, right below that you can also see a 2020 copyright line.

My inclination is to say, no, it's not a rookie card despite what BBM says.  The card (and Sasaki's base card in the set) not only has a 2021 cover date but there had already been about 10 previous Sasaki cards from BBM with 2020 cover dates that were as "rookie"  cards.  I kind of feel this one's just late to the party.

What do you guys think?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It says rookie card so it meets the requirements, so yes it is

Furnitude said...

What about the 2018 limited addition cards? Are those truly rare?

NPB Card Guy said...

Sasaki was drafted by the Marines in the 2019 draft. His first cards are all 2020 issues. There is no legitimate card of his from before 2020.