1995 Densho Ichiro "Big Card"

I got a message from someone recently, asking me if I could identify a card he had.  He said he'd picked the card up in the early 2000s from someone who frequently traveled to Japan.  He included the following two photos showing the front and back of the card:

To be clear, the "card" is embedded in the upper center part of the larger sheet.  It has perforated edges, clearly intended to be punched out of the sheet.

The card owner included a few more details about the card:

• The card itself measured 6.75" x 4.75" with the full sheet being 9" x 7"
• The card stock is thinner than a normal baseball card but thicker than a typical magazine page

I had never seen anything like this before but my first impression was that this had been issued in a magazine of some sort.  The fact that there was something that looked suspiciously like page numbers on it ("13" in the lower left corner of the front and "14" in the lower right corner of the back) supported that theory.

I reached out to Gary Engel to see what he had to say about it.  Gary had never seen it before either but he was able to quickly figure out several things:

According to what it says on the card, it must have been an insert in a 1995 issue of Dengeki Shonen Magazine.  According to Japanese Wikipedia, Dengeki Shonen Magazine was produced from September 1994 through September 1996.  It was a Nintendo Gaming Magazine, but also contained comics having nothing to do with gaming.  According to Wikipedia, the concept of combining comics with Nintendo was a failure, and publication ceased after only two years.  I have the idea it was a monthly magazine, but I couldn't find out for sure.

The back of the card mentions that this card is the first of a series of Big Cards and that the series will continue in future issues.  The card is related to a contest in which those who can answer the four trivia questions about Ichiro on the back can receive free 10 card packs of 1995 BBM Baseball.  

I looked on Yahoo Japan and there aren't any copies of any issue of Dengeki Shonen Magazine for sale.  Therefore, maybe it is a rare magazine and thus the Ichiro is a rare card.  Apparently, most Nintendo gamers of the era weren't baseball fans. 

Gary also expressed surprised to continuously discover cards he'd never seen before.  "Even after being closely involved with Japanese baseball cards for nearly 40 years, I keep finding additional issues that were unknown to me on a weekly basis!"

I want to thank the owner of the card for reaching out to me about this and Gary for figuring out where it was from.

More 2026 Releases

There's been a couple new set announcement recently, with one of the sets actually being scheduled for release next week, so I figured it was time to do a quick round up of them.

- Calbee is releasing yet another "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" set next week on January 27th.  "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" is a mobile game and this will be the third set that Calbee's done as a tie-in.  This looks like it's a follow-on to the set Calbee released at the beginning of December as the card numbers in the new set are starting where that set ended (and now that I look more carefully at the card from that set that Kenny sent me, I see it says "Series 1" on it).  This new set will have 49 cards - 24 "2025 Prospi Selection", 24 "2025 Anniversary Players" and one "secret" card.  I think the "2025 Prospi Selection" cards (which I assume is something from the game) have kira parallels available while the "2025 Anniversary Players" cards have kira and/or facsimile signature parallels.  Not counting the "secret" card, there are four cards per team.  There's some big names in the set including Yuki Yanagita, Kensuke Kondoh, Hayato Sakamoto and Teruaki Sato.  It somewhat surprisingly includes Munetaka Murakami who I would have thought couldn't be a on an NPB card set for active players but clearly the licensing details aren't what I thought they were.  The checklist is kind of surprisingly heavy on foreign players with ten total including Raidel Martinez and Livan Moinelo.  What's a bit odd is at least three of those foreign players are, like Murakami, no longer the property of the teams they are listed with.  Tayron Guerrero is no longer a Chiba Lotte Marine and Tyler Austin and Trevor Bauer are no longer Yokokama DeNA Baystars.  I believe that this is the first time Bauer has appeared on a card in any of the major Japanese card manufacturers and I suspect it will be the last, at least as an active player.

- The Eagles annual team issued set has been issued by Epoch the past few years and I'm starting to wonder if it should still be considered a "team issued" set.  When the 2025 edition of this set was announced, I assumed it was the 1st Version set with a 2nd Version set to be released later in the year.  That turned out to not be the case so I won't make that mistake with this year's edition which will be released on February 11th.  The base set will contain 77 cards of active players, including development players.  I believe that the 2025 draft picks/2026 rookie class are included.  There are silver and gold facsimile signature parallels of each of these cards.  There are three insert sets - "Key Performances", "Mound Star" and "My Routine" and autographed cards of all the players with the exception of any development players who were not 2025 draft picks (if that makes sense).  There are also Rui Muneyama uniform cards along with the somewhat ubiquitous "GEM" premium insert cards in both "White" and "Black" varieties. 

- TIC (aka "Hits" or "Produce 216") is issuing their first "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team set since their Hawks set last year and, not surprisingly, it's again for the Hawks.  Once again, there's 32 oversized cards available - 16 "normal" and 16 "special with foil autograph".  There's 16 players listed so everyone has a "normal" and a "special" card.  There are real autographs available as well.  This year's edition will be released on March 28th.

Card Of The Week January 18

Takahiro Norimoto is not coming to North America this year.  He'd qualified for international free agency after being with the Eagles since 2013 and was looking to move to MLB.  I heard that there was at least one team that showed some interest but apparently they couldn't come to terms.  Instead, Norimoto will join the Yomiuri Giants and be reunited with a former teammate, Masahiro Tanaka.  He was the Eagles' closer the past two years, replacing Yuki Matsui when Matsui left for the Padres, but the Giants will have him returning to a starting role.

Here's a Bushiroad DreamOrder card of Norimoto that was a giveaway at the Eagles game I went to in Sendai in 2024.  It appears to be a promo card that does not have an equivalent card in any of the DreamOrder sets.

RIP Kim Min-jae

Long time KBO infielder Kim Min-jae passed away from cancer this past week at age 53.  Kim was born in Busan and joined his hometown team, the Lotte Giants, after graduating from high school in 1991.  He spent eleven seasons with them before leaving for the SK Wyverns as a free agent after the 2001 season.  After four seasons, he moved on as a free agent again, this time to the Hanwha Eagles where he played the last four years of his career.  He was the first player in KBO history to play in over 2100 games although his 2,113 total games played has since been passed by other players.

He was considered a defensive whiz and was frequently selected for the Korean National Team, most significantly for the 2006 World Baseball Classic and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where Korea won the Gold Medal.

Following his playing career, he coached for half the KBO teams - Hanwha in 2009-12, the Doosan Bears in 2013, the KT Wiz from 2014 to 2016, Lotte in 2017-18, back to Doosan for 2019-20, the SSG Landers from 2021 to 2023 and back to Lotte in 2024 and 2025.  He also was a coach for the Korean National Team for the 2023 WBC.

Because there weren't many KBO cards produced during his playing career, he didn't have a lot of baseball cards.  TCDB lists six although one of those is an autographed card and one is kinda-sorta an insert card.  I have three of the four base cards along with the insert - it's from the "Future Watch" insert set in the 2006 SP Authentic set.

1999 Teleca #47

1999 Teleca Premium #48

2000 Teleca #41

2006 SP Authentic "Future Watch" WBC-69

2026 Hall Of Fame Class

The Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame has announced its 2026 inductees and the only one elected was Hideki Kuriyama.  Kuriyama had a seven year career with the Yakult Swallows from 1984 to 1990 and was the manager of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters from 2012 to 2021.  He managed the Fighters to a Nippon Series championship in 2016 along with a Pacific League pennant in 2012 but I think it's pretty clear that he was elected for two reasons.  Reason number one is that he managed Samurai Japan to the 2023 World Baseball Classic championship and reason number two is that he was Shohei Ohtani's only manager in NPB.

Kuriyama is the fourth of the five Japanese WBC team managers to be elected to the Hall Of Fame, following Sadaharu Oh (2006 team), Tatsunori Hara (2009) and Koji Yamamoto (2013).  Only Hiroki Kokubo (2017) has not been elected and he probably will at some point (although at the Hall's glacial pace, the sun may have burned out by then).  Hirokazu Ibata, who will manage the team for this year's WBC, is also not a Hall Of Famer.

Kuriyama was elected on the "Experts" ballot while the other two ballots - the "Players" ballot and the "Special Awards" ballot - did not result in anyone getting the necessary votes.  Masahiro Kawai fell short of election by two votes on the "Players" ballot.  I think this is the first year there's only been one person elected to the Hall since 1984.

Here are cards of Kuriyama as player, Fighters' manager and Samurai Japan manager:

1989 Calbee #103

2015 Calbee Series Two #M-03

2023 Topps Samurai Japan #13

He took part in a First Pitch Ceremony at the first game at the Fighters' new ballpark on March 30th, 2023, less than ten days after winning the WBC.  Former Fighters managers Trey Hillman and Masataka Nashida also participated but only Kuriyama ended up with a card in BBM's 2nd Version:

2023 BBM 2nd Version #FP01

I wanted to share a couple other cards of him.  He hasn't shown up in many of BBM's OB sets but two of the more recent ones had great photos:

2018 BBM Time Travel 1989 #27

2022 BBM Swallows History 1950-2022 #31

Finally I want to share the card I got him to autograph for me when the Fighters did spring training in Peoria, Arizona back in 2016 - which somehow will be ten years ago next month!

2015 BBM 1st Version #055

Song Sung-Mun Of The San Diego Padres

It kind of got lost among the other signings and the holidays but the San Diego Padres signed former Kiwoom Heroes infielder Song Sung-Mun to a four year contract.  Song was originally drafted by the then-Nexen Heroes in 2015 and made his top level debut that season.  He spent a lot of the next few years on the farm team and missed the entire 2020 season fulfilling his military obligations (which pretty much involved playing for the Sangmu Phoenix, a team associated with the military that plays in the KBO Futures League, KBO's farm league).  He became a regular with the Heroes in 2021 and had the best two years of his career the last two seasons - hitting .340 with 19 home runs and 104 RBIs in 2024 and .315 with 26 home runs and 90 RBIs in 2025.  I think his only experience with the Korean National Team was during the 2024 Premier 12.

Given that there aren't anywhere near as many KBO sets as NPB sets, he doesn't have a whole lot of baseball cards.  TCDB lists only 19 cards for him but I think ten of those are parallels or autograph cards - it's hard to be sure since KBO sets can be somewhat complicated with multiple base set cards sometimes having the same number, making it hard to tell if a particular card listing is a base card or a parallel.  His earliest known cards are from the 2018 SCC sets - #SCCR-01/157 in the KBO League Regular Collection, #SCCR-02R/058 in the KBO Collection 2 Red set and ##SCC-02/171 KBO Premium Collection.  It's possible there are earlier, team-issued cards of him but they are not listed in TCDB.  Here are all the cards I have of him - it's not many as I stopped getting KBO cards after 2021 and he was not in any of the 2020 or 2021 sets:

2018 SCC KBO League Regular Collection #SCCR-01/157

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 Red #SCCR-02R/058

2019 SCC KBO Regular Collection 1 #SCCR1-19/074

2019 SCC KBO Premium Collection 1 #SCCP1-19/084

Card Of The Week January 11

I have this list of possible "Card Of The Week" topics in case of a slow news week when I have to figure out something to write about.  One of the ones for the past few years has been about Cy Sneed, the now former Swallows pitcher.  I've been reluctant to do it for two reasons.  The first is that it's kind of making fun of his name which I try to avoid (although I've done it before).  The other is that I didn't feel like I really had anything interesting to say about his cards (not that that's ever stopped me before).  But a question someone had on Discord the other day made me realize that I did have something relevant to post about a card of Sneed's so here we go.

I can't link to the post on Discord as you need to be a member of the group to see it and I don't want to screenshot it without asking the original poster for permission.  The OP had opened a box of 2023 BBM Baystars cards and had pulled what he thought was the "the laziest of all of the secret versions" - a parallel card of Toshiro Miyazaki that had a different color scheme on it but otherwise was identical to the original card.  

I did a little research and discovered a couple things.  The first is that these aren't really "secret versions" - they're "color variations".  Each of the 2023 BBM team sets had three of them - all using the same photo as the base set card.  2023 was the first year that BBM did this.  They expanded it in 2024 to have twelve for each team and those cards did feature alternate photos.  The other thing I discovered - realized, actually - is that I had some of these.  My friend Jason (of the now defunct "JK's Card Shoppe" on Ebay) had sent me the three 2023 Swallows cards a few years back.  I didn't really understand what they were at the time.  Here's the original and "color variant" for Cy Sneed (#S28):

Original

Color Variant

The comment I had been reluctant to make is that for the longest time, I thought "Cy Sneed" sounded like a character from Star Wars.  But then I watched season three of "Picard" a while back and realized that "Sneed" was actually a Ferengi.  So he's a Star Trek character, not a Star Wars one.

And I'm sure Mr. Sneed has probably heard all of these comments about his name already.  No disrespect intended.

Kenny Strikes Again

It wasn't even a day after I posted about getting a surprise envelope in the mail from Kenny - perhaps better known as Zippy Zappy - when I received a second envelope in the mail from him.  This one had ten cards in it, all from 2025 sets.

The first three cards were from the 2025 Topps NPB set:

2025 Topps NPB #68

2025 Topps NPB #186

2025 Topps NPB #211

It's interesting that Topps decided to use black ink on the names on the first and last of these three cards.  They're not too difficult to read in person but, man, the scans are practically unreadable.  The Marines player is Kyota Fujiwara and the Giants player is Taisei Ota who just goes by "Taisei".

The next batch of cards were from the 2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB.  I think Stadium Club is probably the best NPB set that Topps does (ok, it's a small sample size of two) so I was very happy to get these cards:

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #126

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #25

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #73

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #35

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #97

2025 Topps Stadium Club NPB #45

I saved the best for last.  In September, Bushiroad had put out a Samurai Japan set under their collectible card game line "DreamOrder".  As far as I can tell, it's for the 2024 Premier 12 edition of the team and appears to have cards of all 28 players from the squad.  Kenny sent me the Hiroto Takahashi card from this set:

2025 Bushiroad DreamOrder Samurai Japan #PB01-SJ01

As Kenny mentioned when he shared this card on his blog, the foil on this card makes it difficult to scan (I'm paraphrasing a bit).  But it looks pretty nice in person.

I thought I'd share a gif that sums up my feelings about the cards:

Thanks again for the cards, Kenny!

Kazuma Okamoto Of The Toronto Blue Jays

Kazuma Okamoto, formerly of the Yomiuri Giants, signed a four year deal worth $60 million with the Toronto Blue Jays a few days ago.  Okamoto was the Giants' first round pick in the 2014 draft out of Chiben Gakuen High School.  Okamoto spent most of his first three seasons as a professional on the farm team, not becoming a regular with the ichi-gun squad until 2018.  He had a breakout season that year, hitting .309 with 33 home runs and 100 RBIs.  That would be the first of six consecutive seasons that he'd hit over 30 home runs with a high of 41 in 2023.  He dipped to "only" 27 in 2024 and was injured for much of last season, causing him to hit just 15 home runs in only 69 games.

Okamoto led the Central League in home runs three times (2020-21 & 2023) and RBIs twice (2020 & 2021).  He's won two Best 9 awards (2020 & 2024) and three Golden Gloves (20-22 & 2024) and is a five time All Star (2018-19, 2021, 2023-24) - he was selected in 2022 but withdrew due to having caught COVID.

TCDB lists 14 rookie cards for Okamoto from 2015 and that number isn't as inflated by parallels, memorabilia and autographed cards as Imai and Murakami's counts were.  I think he has seven rookie cards from base sets.  As usual, his first card is from BBM's Rookie Edition set (#054) - actually his first TWO cards are from that set as he also appears in the "Then & Now" subset (#112).  His other BBM cards are in 1st Version (#186), the Giants team set (#G50 and #G78 in the "Star-To-Be" subset) and the Rookie Edition Premium set (#RP19).  His only non-BBM rookie card is from the Bandai Owners League 02 set (#66) which may actually be a short-print or insert card.  Here's three of his BBM rookie cards:

2015 BBM Rookie Edition #054

2015 BBM 1st Version #186

2015 BBM Giants #G50

Here's a card of him from every year for the rest of his career up until 2024 (when I stopped buying new cards):

2016 Giants Players Day

2017 Epoch Giants #28

2018 Calbee Series Two #131

2019 BBM 1st Version #233 Secret Version

2020 BBM Fusion #TH04

2021 BBM 1st Version #176

2020 Epoch NPB #092

2023 BBM 1st Version #259

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #81

I want to end this post with a couple Samurai Japan cards of Okamoto.  He's played in a handful of the friendly matches with foreign teams (the 2018 MLB All Star tour, the March 2019 games against Mexico and the November 2022 games against Australia) but the only major tournament he's played in was the 2023 World Baseball Classic.  He had six WBC cards that year and he also appeared in the 2019 Calbee Samurai Japan set and the Topps Now singles and team set for the 2022 games.  Here are cards from each of these groups:

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-27

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan team set #SJ-20

2023 Topps Now WBC #WBC-52

Tatsuya Imai Of The Houston Astros

Last week, the Houston Astros announced that they had signed former Saitama Seibu Lions right handed pitcher Tatsuya Imai to a three year contract.  Imai had been a star pitcher at Sakushin Gajuin high school, helping them win the 2016 Summer Koshien tournament - he was the starter and winning pitcher in the final game against Hokkai.  He pitched in all five of Sakushin's games in that tournament, striking out 44 while only only allowing five runs in 41 innings of work.

The Lions took him with their first pick in that fall's draft.  Injuries and a suspense due to underage smoking limited him to only a handful of games with the farm team for his first year and a half as a professional, but he made an auspicious debut with the top team on June 13th of 2018, starting against the Swallows and holding them to only one run in six innings.  He was the first Lions pitcher to win his ichi-gun debut since Daisuke Matsuzaka in 1999.  The rest of his outings that year were a mixed bag but he showed enough promise to make the starting rotation when the 2019 season opened.

His pitching continued to be a mixed bag for a couple seasons - he missed some time due to injuries and was demoted to the bullpen for a spell in 2020 - but he started to turn it around in 2021 and had three straight ten win seasons for a pretty weak Lions team in 2023-25.  2025 was his best season ever, going 10-5 with a 1.92 ERA and a league leading 178 strikeouts.  He threw a combined no-hitter with Kaima Taira against the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks in April (it's not an official no-hitter because NPB does not acknowledge combined no-hitters or no-hitters in which the losing team scores a run) and also struck out 17 batters in a game against the Baystars in June.  

TCDB lists 56 cards for Imai from his first year of 2017 but, as I've pointed out with other players, that number's somewhat inflated by parallels, autograph and memorabilia cards.  He really has only nine rookie cards that are base set cards.  His first card was #028 in BBM's Rookie Edition set and he also appears in BBM's Icons - Japan Pride (#10), 1st Version (#103), Lions (#L02) and Rookie Edition Premium (#RP10) sets.  He also appears in the "Draft Pick" subset in Calbee's Series Two set (#D-04).  His last 2017 cards are in Epoch sets - their Lions team set (#6) as well as both the Pacific League (#36) and Pacific League Premier Edition (#35).  I have seven of these cards:

2017 BBM Rookie Edition #028

2017 BBM Icons - Japan Pride #10

2017 BBM 1st Version #103

2017 BBM Lions #L02

2017 Calbee Series Two #D-04

2017 Epoch Lions #6

2017 Epoch Pacific League #36

Here's a card of him from each year of his career up until 2024 (since I stopped getting NPB cards after that).  This includes a card from his only appearance with Samurai Japan in a somewhat major international tournament - the 2023 Asian Professional Baseball Championship.

2018 BBM Fusion #033

2019 BBM 1st Version #002

2020 Calbee Series Two #075

2021 Epoch NPB #074

2022 Topps NPB #141

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan Asian Professional Baseball Championship Team Set #SJ-11

2024 BBM Lions Collection #LC09

Looking at his cards over the years, it's obvious when he and Kona Takahashi started their "Team Long Hair"!