Mail Day!

I got three packages with cards in the mail today and I thought I'd do a quick post to show off what I got.  First up is a package of cards from COMC.  This is a "Run Producers" insert card of Kazuhiro Kiyohara from the 1996 BBM Diamond Heroes set:

1996 BBM Diamond Heroes #R-9

Wow, that scan looks really bad.  The card is lenticular with two images on it - which one is visible depends on how you look at it.  A lot of the card is actually transparent.  It looks a lot better in person - here's photos showing the two images on the card:

I don't often get surprised by a Japanese card anymore.  I've been collecting NPB cards for almost 24 years now and I've seen a lot of cards.  But every so often, I come across something I've never seen before and this was one of those times:

So obviously, this is a manga illustration of Sadaharu Oh when he was managing the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks.  The drawing was apparently done by Shinji Mizushima, the artist who had drawn baseball manga like Dokaben, and Abu-san.  My guess is that this is some sort of tie-in to the 2000 Nippon Series which was between Oh's Hawks and Shigeo Nagashima's Giants - in fact I suspect that the hand Oh is shaking is Nagashima's and there's another card showing him.  COMC has listed this card as part of the 2000 O-N boxed set but I'm pretty confident that it's not part of that set.  My guess is that this and the corresponding Nagashima card were included in some magazine associated with the 2000 Nippon Seroes but I don't know what that was.  I've found this card on Yahoo! Japan Auctions but I've not come across the Nagashima card.

UPDATE - Twitter user Angelina B did some better digging than I did on Amazon Japan and found an old listing showing both cards:

 She said there was "nothing solid on where they came from. There were some references to a program/pamphlet from the 2000 Japan series" which tracks with what makes the most sense to me.  Thanks, Angelina!  I have to find the Nagashima now.

The other cards I got from COMC are a little more recent.  I got a "Close Relationship" insert from the 2021 BBM Rookie Edition set (mostly to get another Shugo Maki card) and two more of the 2023 Topps NPB "2001" inserts:

2021 BBM Rookie Edition #CR3

2023 Topps NPB #01-3

2023 Topps NPB #01-22

The second package I received today was a group of three cards I had picked up from a seller on Ebay.  Two of the cards were team issued cards for the Giants from 2009:

The third card was a 1975/76 Nippon-Ham card of Atsushi Nagaike.  This might be the best condition Nippon-Ham card I have:

The last package came from my friend Jason (aka "JK's Card Shoppe").  He'd had several older autographed cards for sale for a good price and I decided to pick two of them up:

2015 Epoch Tigers Nippon Champions 1985 #A-YOH

2006 BBM Eagles Yasuo Nagaike Autograph

Jason had told me he was going to throw in a bunch of 2023 Calbee cards which included several Star cards.  I won't show all the cards but here are the Star cards:

2023 Calbee Series One #S-14 Kazuto Taguchi

2023 Calbee Series Two #S-37 Tetsuto Yamada

2023 Calbee Series Two #S-40 Toshiro Miyazaki

2023 Calbee Series Two #S-48 Yuki Okabayashi

He also threw in a bunch of other cards that he didn't warn me about.  A lot of them were BBM team set cards from last year but probably the most interesting thing was a Calbee card from last year he didn't tell me he was including:

2023 Calbee Series One #L-8 Kosuke Fukudome

He included a couple parallels.  The most interesting ones were this silver bordered card from this year's Epoch NPB set and a "silver paper" parallel (/200) for one of the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards from last year's BBM Fusion set:

2024 Epoch NPB #046

2023 BBM Fusion #FP44

Thanks for the cards, Jason!