Japanese Baseball Cards: Random Cards From Ryan

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Random Cards From Ryan

It's been just over a month now since I got my latest "big box o'cards" from my friend Ryan in Japan and I'm finally getting close to the end of the posts I wanted to do about what he sent me. I thought I'd do a relatively quick post tonight on some random cards that he sent me.

First up are a couple rookie cards from BBM team sets - the first player was better known as an outfielder but his rookie card still reflects that he was drafted as a pitcher:

2004 BBM Fighters #F16

2007 BBM Giants #G071

Speaking of BBM teams sets, I decided last year that I wanted to complete the sets from the 00's that I had opened boxes for. There were eleven of these in all - 2003-05 Giants, 2004, 2006-07 Tigers, 2004 Baystars, 2005 Dragons, 2006 Buffaloes and 2006-07 Swallows. Ryan found a bunch of the cards I needed from several of the sets, including all the cards I needed for the 2006 Buffaloes and Giants sets. I'm not going to show all the cards he got me from these sets (it was probably around 100 total) but here's a representative sample:

2006 BBM Tigers #052

2007 BBM Tigers #T051

2007 BBM Tigers #T096

2006 BBM Buffaloes #Bs31

2006 BBM Swallows #TY07

2006 BBM Swallows #TY96

2004 BBM Baystars #YB34

2003 BBM Giants #019

2004 BBM Giants #G49

2004 BBM Giants #G99

2005 BBM Giants #G014

I got a partial set of the 2019 BBM Brilliant Dragons set the first time I got Zippy Zapped and I've been slowly attempting to find the three cards that Kenny didn't include. I found an auction last year for the Joely Rodriguez card - the final one I needed to complete the set and Ryan picked it up for me:

2019 BBM Brilliant Dragons #11

Another set I decided to try to complete was the 1999 BBM Mr Giants set which was a biographical set for Shigeo Nagashima. Ryan only found a couple of cards from this set for me but one of them was probably the most valuable - there's a subset featuring the Giant's top draft pick every year that Nagashima managed the team which means there's a card of Hideki Matsui:

1999 BBM Mr Giants #G91

I hadn't gotten the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards from the 2021 BBM Fusion set when I originally got the set and I finally decided to go after them a few months ago. Ryan found six of them so I'm down to only needing three now:

2021 BBM Fusion #FP31

I've been somewhat ambivalently attempting to complete the "Rising Stars" subset from the 2000 Upper Deck Ovation set for a few years now and Ryan picked me up several more cards from it. I'm down to only needing one card from the set now so I guess I really am going to try to complete it (but I still don't like the set that much):

2000 Upper Deck Ovation "Rising Stars" #10

Speaking of sets I don't like that much...I ended up asking Ryan to pick up this "1989" insert card for Takeya Nakamura from the 2023 Bowman NPB set. This is completely because I like Nakamura and not because I like the Bowman set:

2023 Bowman NPB #89B-5

I've mentioned that big lot of Lions cards I had asked Ryan to pick up - there was a rookie card of Hiroyuki Nakajima from the 2001 Broccoli set lurking in it:

2001 Broccoli #065

I came across a printed autograph card of Yutaka Enatsu from the 2010 BBM Premium Malts set for a low price on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and asked Ryan to pick it up:

2010 BBM Premium Malts #MP1

Finally if you've been paying attention to other posts I'm done with round ups of random cards from the boxes Ryan has sent me, you should be expecting these next items - Epoch NPB promo cards! Ryan sent me one for the 2022 set but he sent me 20 for the 2023 set: