2023 Epoch One Promo Cards

Another one of the unexpected things that Ryan sent me was a handful of promos for the 2023 Epoch One cards.  Until I saw these, I had no idea that there were promo versions of Epoch One cards.  Here's the five cards he sent me:

You might be asking yourself, "why is he calling an Epoch One promo card for an event in 2022 a 2023 card?"  That's because the back of the card shows a copyright date of 2023.  All the card backs are identical, except for the photo and team name:

These backs are very similar to those of the "regular" 2023 Epoch One cards:

The big difference on the backs, besides the lack of a card number and the promo information at the bottom of the card, is that the promo cards lack Epoch's watermark.  The fronts, however, look exactly the same as the non-promo version of the card (none of which I have).

JABA Cards

I've been constantly mentioning that Ryan had put some items that I wasn't expecting in the box he sent me a few weeks back.  The cards I'm going to talk about in this post were a mix of cards that I asked him to pick up and ones that I wasn't expectng.

The Japan Amateur Baseball Association (JABA) is the organization that oversees the corporate or industrial league teams in Japan.  They've put out baseball card sets for at least the four years between 2021 and 2024 - I don't know if they've done any this year or not.  I had previously gotten cards from the 2021, 2022 and 2024 sets via packs from either Ryan or Deanna but I had tracked down a handful of cards for sale on-line that I asked Ryan to pick up for me.  I was expecting something along the lines of six or seven cards so I was surprised to find around 36 in the box!

I find these kind of fascinating, despite not knowing really anything about most of the players or teams.  There's just something interesting about them to me.  If I could find a way to get more of them, I would, but they're kind of rare to find out in the wild.  It wasn't until about a year ago that I finally figured out the checklists for the three sets I had cards from, partly because they didn't show up in Mercari very often (and almost never on Yahoo! Japan Auctions).

I thought about showing a subset of what I got but I ultimately decided to show all the cards.  First up are ten from the 2021 set:

Next up are 23(!) cards from the 2022 set.  You'll notice some overlap in the players - there's actually a huge overlap in the checklists.  84 players appear in both sets.  The 2021 set had 92 cards and the 2022 set had 88 cards.

One of the cards that I asked Ryan to pick up was this card from the 2023 set.  This is actually the only 2023 card that I've ever seen.  All I can tell you about the set is that from the card number of this card, I assume there's at least 40 cards in it.

Ryan also picked up two cards from the 2024 set for me.  The design of these cards looks very similar to the 2023 card - the only difference I see is in the background of the black rectangle at the bottom of the cards:

Some comments about some of the players:

• Hiromasa Funabasama (2022 set #22JP025) was the fifth round pick of the Giants in the 2022 draft and was the 2024 Central League Rookie Of The Year
• Ryuji Komago (2022 set #22JP035) was the Eagles 2nd round pick in the 2022 draft
• Hiroki Fukunaga (2022 set #22JP065) was the Dragons 7th round pick in the 2022 draft
• I wonder if the photos on Kaisei Itoh's 2021 card (#21JP004) and 2022 card (#22JP004) were taken at the same game
• Motoki Mukoyama (2021 set #21JP092, 2022 set #22JP087) was a member of the 2018 Japan Collegiate National Team and appeared in the 2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  I know that he's also in the 2024 set so I assume he's probably in the 2023 set
• Ryoma Yamanaka (2024 set #24JP041) was the fourth round pick of the Buffaloes in the 2024 draft

2022 Carp JRFPA Mini-Shikishi Cards

One of the unexpected things that Ryan put in that box I got from him a few weeks back were a stack of oversized cards - called "mini-shikishi" or "mini colored paper" cards - featuring OB Carp players.  They're from a set of 15 cards that an outfit called TIC (or "Hits" or "Produce 216") in conjunction with the Japan Retired Foreign Player Association (JRFPA) in 2022.  This is the second of three card sets that the JRFPA has been associated with - the other two were box sets with Epoch that came out in 2021 and 2023 (although the set had a "cover date" of 2022).

Like the rest of TIC's "mini-shikishi" cards, these are blank backed and measure 5 1/2 inches wide by 4 3/4 inches high.   Ryan sent me nine of them in all - here's seven of them:

#N-08

#N-13

#N-01

#N-07

#N-06

#N-09

#N-15

I actually didn't realize this until I was scanning the cards in for this post, but two of the cards are autographed!  I'm pretty sure these are authentic autographs and not facsimile and I'm pretty sure they were issued by the manufacturer (as opposed to them being signed after-market) since they have a different prefix on their card numbers ("R" as opposed to "N" which I'm going to assume if for "rare" as opposed to "normal"):

#R-12

#R-05

The six players in the set whose cards I didn't get are Jim Lyttle, Marty Brown, Rick Lancellotti, Eddy Diaz, Luis Lopez and Randy Johnson.

I never think much about these cards when I see them advertised but I always think they're nicer than I expected when I get some of them.  That said, I don't have any real plans to try to get the remaining six cards that I'm missing.