Card Of The Week September 21

Shunpeita Yamashita of the Buffaloes had a really good first couple innings against the Lions on Thursday evening in Tokorozawa.  He struck out the first six batters to start the game, tying the Pacific League record set by Fumiya Nishiguchi.  Nishiguchi, who was at the game since he's the Lions manager, had done it back in 2002, coincidentally against Orix (then the BlueWave).

Unfortunately for Yamashita and the Buffaloes, things kind of went downhill after that, although it took a while.  Tatsuya Imai was pitching pretty well for the Lions too, and the two teams were scoreless through the first seven innings.  Orix scored an unearned run in the top of the eighth after Imai came out of the game but the Lions tied it back up in the bottom of the inning, driving Yamashita from the game.  He only had two strikeouts after the first two innings.  

The game went into the bottom of the ninth before 38 year old Ginjiro Sumitani came up with two out and a runner on second and ended things (with the help of a misplay by Buffaloes left fielder Taishi Hirooka):

Here are cards of Yamashita, Nishiguchi and Sumitani:

2024 BBM 1st Version #164

2002 BBM 1st Version #241

2024 BBM Lions #L35

Baystars Fan Club Cards

I frequently mention that the biggest unknown area of Japanese baseball cards are the team issued/fan club cards.  Case in point - Ryan threw a bunch of such cards for the Baystars in the box he sent me back in July - 62 in all, dating from between 2016 and 2019.  Now I had a lot of Baystars team issued cards from this time period already so imagine my surprise that not only did I not have any of these cards, I only had one card that appeared to even be from one of the sets these cards were from!  It was even more surprising because, as far as I could tell, the cards appeared to be from 22 different sets!

It's hard sometimes to tell which set the cards just from the front of it so I figure the best way to do this post is to show the front and back of one card from each set.  I will point out that the majority of these cards have a "kira" finish on the front which doesn't always show up will in the scans.

I need to also point out that whoever Ryan got these cards from was apparently a big fan of pitcher Kenta Ishida as he's on 13 of the cards.  

Keep in mind that the names I'm giving the sets should in no way be considered the "official" name of these sets.  On the advice of a card collector on Reddit, I did some poking around the news archive on the Baystars' website to see if I could find anything about any of the sets.  I specifically was looking at the 2017 archive and while I did find some stuff about cards, they didn't seem to be talking about any of the cards I had.  So these names are simply ones I've given the sets to differentiate them from each other.

We'll do this year by year.  Ryan sent me five cards from 2016 that appear to be from four different sets.  I'm calling this first one the "Fan Club" set:

I'm calling this next one "Fan Club Kira":

"Fan Club Star Night":

This last one is "Fan Club Climax":

Almost half of the cards I got were from 2017 - 29 cards representing what I think is nine sets.  I again am calling the first one the "Fan Club" set.  This is the only one of all of these sets that I already had a card from:

"Fan Club Kira":

"Fan Club Kira Gold":

"This Is My Era" (it's not just pitchers so I assume they didn't mean "ERA"):

"I * Yokohama Day":

"Victory Festival 2017":

"Fan Club Star Night":

"Fan Club App Card Collection"  The lines of text on the back of the card says that Ishida came in 13th in the fan vote of the App Card Collection with 668 votes:

"Highlights" I find these the most interesting as they feature events from the season.  I don't know if these were released the same way that teams like the Giants issued "Winning Game Cards" or if they were released after the season.   I do know that there can be multiple cards for the same game.  All of the cards I have between this set and the similar sets from 2018 and 2019 feature Baystars wins at home:

Moving onto 2018, there were 17 cards from five sets.  This first set is "2018 Spring Camp":

"Fan Club Kira":

"Fan Club Kira Silver":

"Get The Flag!"  I think this was tied into the 20th Anniversary of the Baystars' 1998 Championship.  Besides the explicit mention of "'98" on the back of the card, Tanaka is wearing a throwback uniform:

"Highlights":

Finally for 2019, there were 11 cards in just four sets.  The first one is "2019 Spring Camp":

You could switch the names of the next two sets and they'd still fit.  Here's "Fan Club Kira":

And for lack of a better name, "Fan Club Kira Signature":

And, to wrap things up, "Highlights":

Whew!  That was a lot of cards and sets.  I don't think this is a comprehensive list of the sets for any of these four years and I have no idea what the total number of cards and sets the Baystars issued during this time period (or any other years for that matter).  I also don't know if other teams also have the bewildering number of fan club/team-issued sets.  I know there's a couple years that I have cards from multiple Lions sets but that's still on the order of three or four at most, not nine.

Autumn Issues

I had been planning all of last week to do a "New Releases" post but it kept getting delayed for one thing or another.  I didn't think it would take too long, though, as there were only three sets that had been announced in the last month or so.  But then Friday, Epoch, Topps and BBM all made announcements so the number of new sets to talk about doubled.  So I'd better get moving before they announce more...

- Fusion, BBM's season-in-review set, is back for the tenth year.  This is kind of a kitchen-sink Franken-set that's basically got four independent parts - a 99 card combination active-OB player subset that recaps the year; 25 "1st Version Update" cards featuring players who did not make it into either the 1st or 2nd Version sets for whatever reason; 20 "Monthly MVP" cards and an unspecified number of short-printed "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The "1st Version Update" cards will include players who returned from MLB in mid-season like Shintaro Fujinami and Koyo Aoyagi as well as late signing foreign players like Luke Voit.  The "Monthly MVP" subset is new as previous editions of the set had a 24 card "Title Holders" featuring all the statistical leaders for the year.  I'm not sure why BBM decided to go with monthly MVP winners instead and I'm not sure I like the change (not that BBM is going to care what I think).  There's also the usual insert sets - the 24 "Great Records" cards which highlight milestones reached by two active players from each team; the 12 "Legendary Player" cards which feature one OB player from each team and the serially numbered premium inserts of "Treasure" (12 cards) and "Esperanza" (24 cards).  There are also autographed cards available for both the active and OB players.  The set will be released in late November.

- Epoch's NPB Luxury Collection is back for the fourth year and for the fourth year, the format of the set has completely changed.  The 2022 version was basically a "Chrome-ified" version of a subset of the regular NPB set - almost all the cards in the Luxury version used the same photo as the regular set.  The 2023 version was basically a completely different set that used the same format as the regular NPB set that year - all the photos were different and there was at least one player in the Luxury version that didn't appear in the regular set.  Epoch went the "ultra high-end" route with last year's set where boxes containing just nine cards sold for 23,760 yen (about $160).  Each of the 108 base set cards were serially numbered to 86.  This year's version has gotten even more exclusive - the price for the box hasn't changed but the box now contains just six cards (at least one of which is an autograph).  The base set is now just 36 cards - 3 per team including each team's top two 2024 draft picks.  I assume they're all serially numbered but I don't know how many there are of each card.  There are parallel versions of the base cards, a 24 card "NPB Stars" insert set, a 12 card "Gem" premium insert set (with various parallels) and a boat load of autograph and memorabilia cards.  The set will be released on October 25th.

- The NPB Luxury Collection is not the only "ultra high-end" set coming out from Epoch.  On the same day, Epoch will be releasing the annual Pacific League Premier Edition set in six card boxes that will retail for 17,600 yen (roughly $120).  The base set has 54 cards - nine per team - and there's a 24 card "Pacific League Superstars" insert set which has parallel versions available.  There are 18 premium insert "Gem" cards that also have parallel versions and autographed cards for all the players who appear in the base set.  There are various types of memorabilia cards available as well including ones that are autographed.

- Epoch's first "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player team set will be released on November 1st.  Three card boxes of Giants Stars & Legends with Memorabilia will retail for 16500 (about $112).  The base set has 56 cards - 23 for active players and 33 for OB players (including Sadaharu Oh and the late Shigeo Nagashima).  There are three flavors of the six "Decomori Signature" insert cards - gold (/25), green (/5) and "hologram" (1-of-1) - along with nine "Gem" premium insert cards which have a "Black Gem" parallel that are /5.  The memorabilia cards referred to by the set title are bat cards for six active players.  The set also includes several different types of autographed cards.  All the autographed cards are for OB players because the Giants do not allow authentic autographed cards for any of their active players.

- Topps is finally issuing some more NPB sets for this year.  They announced the NPB Stadium Club set a few weeks back and while the information about it on Trading Card Journal says the set will be released on September 26, the information about it on Topps' Japanese website doesn't have a release date.  Neither site lists useful information like how big the set is but since they've posted a checklist, we know that the base set has the usual 216 cards (18 per team which includes the manager and the top three 2024 draft picks).  There are four 24 card insert sets - "Beam Team", "Concentration", "Savage Sluggers" and "Stadium Shots" - and the usual plethora of autographed cards of current NPB players, Japanese MLB players and "NPB Legends".  I mock Topps for doing a half-assed job on most of their NPB products but I have to admit that I'm impressed by two of the "NPB Legends" that they've has included autographs for.  The first is MLB Hall Of Famer Rich Gossage, who made 28 appearances with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in 1990 and, to my knowledge, has never appeared on an NPB card before.  The second is Hideo Nomo, who has not pretty much not appeared on an NPB card since 1994 (with the exception of the 2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 cards that don't have his photo on them and an SGA card from a 2018 Meikyukai game at Tokyo Dome).  If you're patient, you might be able to pick this set up super-cheap like Sean did with last year's version.

- Topps has also announced their annual NPB Chrome set.  Once again, I can't say for sure when the set will be released (their website says September 30th while Trading Card Journal says October 14th) or how big the base set is - I'm guessing 216 cards again.  Like the past two years, this year's edition is not simply an ugly parallel version of the set they released last summer but will have an entirely different checklist with different photos.  (OK, I acknowledge that not everyone shares my opinion that cards with the Chrome finish are ugly.)  There are four insert sets - "Helix-Power Players", "1990 Topps Baseball", "Kanji Variation" and "NPB Gamers" - but I don't know how big any of them are although I'd guess 24 cards.  This set also has autographed cards available from active and "legendary" NPB players and Japanese MLB players.  I expect that both this set and the Stadium Club set will have a boatload of parallels but their promotional material doesn't list them.

Card Of The Week September 14

I'm a little late in reporting this but a week ago on September 7th, the Hanshin Tigers clinched the Central League pennant.  It was the earliest any team had ever clinched first in the Central League, beating the 1990 Yomiuri Giants by one day.  It was also the first time the Tigers won the CL pennant with a first year manager at the helm.  (H/T NPB Reddit for the trivia)

Since I don't have many cards from this year, I don't have any cards of that first year manager - Kyuji Fujikawa - as manager but I have many of him as a player.  Here's his appearance on the 2008 BBM 2nd Version set's Tigers checklist (#778):

I don't know if it was typical of Fujikawa to lose his hat when he pitched.  There's one other card I know of showing him losing it though.

2025 JABA Cards

The 96th Intercity Baseball Tournament, which is basically the corporate league championship, was held at Tokyo Dome from August 28th until last Monday (the eighth).  Two teams from the Tokai region, Oji and Mitsubishi Motors Okazaki met in the finals with Oji squeaking out a 2-1 victory.

My friend Deanna attended some of the games and sent me the photo above to let me know that JABA had, for the fifth year in a row, put out a set of baseball cards.  She asked me if I wanted her to take photos of the individual pages and I said "yes, please!"  I figured seeing all the cards laid out like this would make it much easier to put a checklist for the set together.  She sent me the photos the next day.

The sheets or posters (I don't know if they're a photo of the cards or some sort of frame holding actual cards) are split up by position.  The one on the far left is all pitchers, the one to the right of it is catchers, the one to the right of that is infielders and the one on the far right is outfielders.  Here's her photos of each sheet:

Pitchers

Catchers

Infielders

Outfielders

There's 80 cards in the set - 27 pitchers, 8 catchers, 24 infielders and 21 outfielders.  I was able to put a checklist together pretty easily - I had assumed that the cards were laid out on the sheets in numerical order and that turned out to be the case.  I found most of the cards were up for sale on Mercari and I was able to verify the card numbers from the photos in those listings.

Actually, to be completely honest, the Mercari listings verified that the cards were laid out on the sheets in order but the numbers I had assigned that cards didn't quite work - the higher numbers were off by one.  I eventually figured out that there didn't appear to be a card #50 - Hiroki Nakagawa and Jin Nakamura appear right next to each other in the third row of the infielder's poster but their numbers are not consecutive (#49 for Nakagawa and #51 for Nakamura).  It's possible that there's a card #50 that does not appear on the sheet but I haven't seen it in the Mercari listings.

Deanna bought five packs and opened them up.  She sent me photos of the packs and the cards:

The fronts and backs of the cards look very similar to the 2024 cards (which actually look very similar to the 2023 cards).

The QR code on the back of the pack leads to the same webpage on the Baseball Foundation Of Japan's site that the QR code on the back of all the previous sets' packs referred to.  This webpage again has a pdf file containing a list of players - it's the 7th version of this pdf and it was generated last February.  I had used previous versions of this pdf to generate the checklists for the 2021, 2022 and 2024 JABA sets.  I didn't need to do that this year and it's a good thing - the pdf only lists 74 players!  There's 26 pitchers, 8 catchers, 20 infielders and 20 outfielders.  

Everyone who's in the pdf is in the set but I noticed something interesting about the cards of the players who weren't in the pdf - they have a gold banner going across the bottom of the card.  There are eleven cards with the banner - five of them are in the pdf and six of them are not.  What's the deal?

I asked Deanna about the banners and she realized that the cards with the banner had a black box on the back that indicated that the player had won a Best 9 award in 2024.  You can see this in the photo of the card backs above - there's four cards (although one of them's a duplicate) with a black box at the bottom of the back of the card.  All the other cards have grey and white boxes in this space.  So the eleven cards are all Best 9 award winners from last year.

Or are they?  Eleven is kind of a weird count for Best 9.  I again went to the Mercari listings and tried to track down all eleven of these cards.  I was only able to find ten of them but luckily all the listings showed both the front and back of the cards.  What I discovered was that not all of these cards were for Best 9 award winners.  Some of the cards were also for statistical leaders - ERA, Wins, Batting Average, Home Runs and RBIs.  Three of the Best 9 winners were also statistical leaders with the Victory and Home Run leaders being the two players with gold banners who were not Best 9 winners.  So nine of the eleven gold banner cards were for Best 9 winners.

You'd think that would make sense, right?  Nine cards for the Best 9?  Well, no because one of those best 9 awards is for best DH so there should actually be TEN Best 9 award winners.  Who's missing?

I had mentioned that there was one gold banner card I couldn't find on Mercari.  It was for Yuki Sato and from the process of elimination from the other Best 9 winners, I knew he needed to be either the first or second base winner.  Which meant that either the first or second base winner either wasn't in the set or didn't have the gold banner on his card.

I finally tracked the list of 2024 award winners on JABA's site and I had my answer.  Sato was the second base winner and the first base winner is not in the card set.  Why is he not in the card set?  Because he's now a member of the Orix Buffaloes - Ryoma Yamanaka.

This is the first time I know of that JABA has done what are essentially "Title Holder" cards in their sets (it's possible they did them in 2023 since I've only ever seen two cards from that set).  Here's the list of these cards with the player's award/title:

Number	Name	Position	Award/Title
23	Daiki Honma	Pitcher	Best 9 (P), ERA Leader
27	Ryuji Higashino	Pitcher	Most Pitcher Wins
35	Kauki Tsushima	Catcher	Best 9 (C)
57	Yuki Sato	Infielder	Best 9 (2B)
58	Keita Wada	Infielder	Best 9 (SS)
59	Daichi Nozaki	Infielder	Best 9 (3B)
60	Yusuke Shimoyama	Infielder	Best 9 (DH)
62	Ryosuke Aizawa	Outfielder	Best 9 (OF), Most RBI
63	Keisho Amiya	Outfielder	Best 9 (OF)
76	Yuichiro Murakami	Outfielder	Most Home Run
80	Fumiya Yoshioka	Outfielder	Best 9 (OF), Batting Champ

Before sharing the checklist itself, I should mention that many of the players have appeared in previous JABA sets.  Two of the players who've appeared in the previous sets - Ryosuke Aizawa and Motoki Mukoyama - also appeared in the 2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  They are not the only players in the set who have appeared in a Panini set - Ryo Arima and Toyo Kumada are in the 2024 version of the USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  The only other player in the set who has earlier, non-JABA cards that I'm aware of is Keisho Amiya who spent three years as a development player for the Baystars.

Thanks again to Deanna for the photos and the information.

I added the 2025 JABA checklist to the same Google spreadsheet that I had shared for the 2021, 2022 and 2024 sets.  I added a placeholder for the 2023 checklist as well: