2010 SCM Retro Rookies

When I was researching the cards distributed with Sports Card Magazine I found a lot of "original" cards that I thought were pretty cool (when I say "original", I mean cards that were not simply promo versions of other BBM issues).  One group of cards that I was very interested in were a set of five cards that came with issue #81 that was published in May 2010 - this group featured cards of players who were rookies that year in the style of the 1991 BBM set.  I assume that this was part of BBM's celebration of their 20th Anniversary (the cards have the logo on the back but pretty much all the 2010 cards did).  Ryan found the cards for me and included them in the package he sent me a few weeks back.  Here are the cards:

This obviously is a kind of precursor to the 2013 BBM Classic set which also re-used the 1991 design.  The biggest difference between these cards and the Classic cards is that these cards are the same smaller than normal size (2 3/8 by 3 5/16 inches) while the Classic cards are the standard size (2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches).  The backs of these are a little more true to the 1991 cards as well.  Here's the back of Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh and the front and back of Shigetoshi Hasegawa's 1991 BBM card for comparison:

There's other cool SCM inserts that I hope to find (or I hope Ryan finds for me) but these were probably top on the list so thanks Ryan!

Lions Team Issued Sets

This is going to be a bit of a long post as I have a bunch of different Lions sets.

1989 "Laminated"

The first cards I have I believe were sold around 1989.  These are laminated photo cards.  Jay Shelton has mentioned to me (and sent me a scan) of some kind of similar Giants cards from roughly the same time frame so this might be a common type of team collectible from that era:

I have seven of these - Koji Akiyama, Kazuhiro Kiyohara (2 different), Kimiyasu Kudoh, Hisanobu Watanabe (3 different).  The cards are a little bigger than normal.

1990 Postcards

This is a set of 22 postcards featuring 23 players from the 1990 Lions:

The cards are unnumbered other than uniform number.  The players are Koji Akiyama (#1), Haruki Yoshitake (#2), Kazuhiro Kiyohara (#3), Seiji Tomashino (#4), Hatsuhiko Tsuji (#5), Norio Tanabe (#6), Hiromichi Ishige (#7), Tadakatsu Hanyuda (#10), Takehiro Ishii (#11), Hirohisa Matsunuma (#15), Taigen Kaku (#18), Tomio Watanabe (#21), Ken Hirano (#24), Yoshitaka Katori (#26), Tsutomu Itoh (#27), Ty Van Burkleo (#29), Ryoji Moriyama (#31), Orestes Destrade (#39), Hisanobu Watanabe (#41), Kazuhito Nishimoto (#42), and Kimiyasu Kudoh (#47) plus a postcard featuring both Tetsuya Shiozaki (#16) and Tetsu Suzuki (#34).

1999 "Hit! Foot! Get!"

I don't know if this card was part of an actual set or just some sort of promotional card for the Lions.  It appears to be related somehow to the opening of the Seibu Dome (the ballpark opened in 1979 but didn't have a roof on it until 1999).

2001 Fan Club Cards

As Jason points out, a lot of the Lions cards between 2001 and 2007 (if not more) have multiple designs per set so it's difficult to figure out which sets a card comes from unless you can see the back of it.  For the 2001 set, I have the same four cards that Jason lists - Kazuo Matsui (#7), Ken Suzuki (#8), Taisei Takagi (#10) and Tsutomu Itoh (#27):

2004 Original Player Cards

While this set still has multiple designs, it looks like at least some of the cards use the same design.  Jason actually has six cards listed for this set but I only have three of them.

2006 Original Player Card

This set is ridiculous.  I have 34 of these cards and it looks like every one of them have a different design!

The 34 cards I have are: Koki Fujiwara (#63), Mitsutaka Gotoh (#41), Taketoshi Gotoh (#6), Hidekazu Hoshi (#61), Tomoki Hoshino (#26), Masahide Kaizuka (#39), Takahiro Matsukawa (#48), Hironori Matsunaga (#24), Kenta Matsusaka (#58), Akira Miyakoshi (#66), Kazuaki Miyazaki (#43), Keisuke Mizuta (#45), Junji Nishikawa (#38), Kohsuke Noda (#22), Kohji Ohnuna (#15), Atsushi Okamoto (#28), Goh Ono (#67), Tomoaki Satoh (#10), Hiroyuki Shibata (#2), Takumi Shiigi (#55), Eiji Shotsy (#25), Haruki Sugiyama (#62), Kohji Tahara (#68), Hiroyuki Takagi (#4), Fumikazu Takanami (#0), Hisashi Takayama (#44), Yasuhiro Tanaka (#57), Masahiro Tazaki (#35), Yuya Tazawa (#50), Tatsuyuki Uemoto (#49), Minoru Yamagishi (#36), Ayumu Yamamoto (#59), Satoshi Yamazaki (#17) and Taichi Yoshimi (#31).

2008 Fan Club

Jason has a bunch of information on this set.  All the cards appear to have the same design but a different border color.  Jason says there are at least five different border colors - grey, white, green, blue and red and that apparently the blue border cards were "replacement cards" when the initial batch of a player's cards ran out.  I will amend that statement by saying there are actually two different shades of blue for border color - I suspect that the darker blue bordered cards are the "replacement" cards as the one I have of Takayuki Kishi doesn't have a number on the back.

Jason has a lot of these listed but I have a couple that he doesn't have the numbers for - Hisashi Takayama (#26), Takatoshi Gotoh (#29) and Yutaro Ohsaki (#31).  Note that the cards have actual numbers on the back and aren't simply numbered by uniform number.

2009 Fan Club(?)

Not much to say about these.  Jason lists five of these cards which cover the four I have:

2011 Fan Club(?)

Again, I don't have much to say about this set.  Jason lists about 30 cards or so from this set, including the four I have.

2013 Fanclub

I have representatives from possibly two separate sets from 2013.  Jason has a listing of 15 cards from the first of these, but oddly enough he doesn't have any of the five cards I have - Takumi Kuriyama (#1), Tatsuya Ohishi (#15), Yusei Kikuchi (#17), Shogo Akiyama (#55) and Takeya Nakamura (#60).

I have four cards from the other set which Jason doesn't have a listing for -  Takumi Kuriyama (#1), Yusei Kikuchi (#17), Hideto Asamusa (#32) and Shogo Akiyama (#55):

2014 Fanclub

I've got representatives from three separate Fanclub sets from 2014.  The front design of each set are all similar but I don't think these are parallel issues.  I have three cards from the first set (which Jason does not have listed) - Takumi Kuriyama (#1), Takayuki Kishi (#11) and Hideto Asamura (#32):

I have nine cards from a gold bordered set (the same nine cards that Jason has listed):

And I have 11 cards from a silver bordered set (and again it's the same group of cards that Jason has listed):

It probably doesn't mean anything, but I noticed that there's no overlap in players in the (possibly) small sample size of 2014 cards I have.  It's possible that the Lions essentially issued these in series with a third of the team in each set.  But that's purely speculation on my part.

2015 Fanclub

Finally I have eight cards from a set released this season - Takumi Kuriyama (#1), Ryota Wakiya (#7), Naoto Watanabe (#8), Yutaro Osaki (#9), Fumiya Nishiguchi (#13), Ryoma Nogami (#20), Ken Togame (#21) and Hideto Asamura (#32):

I found a tiny bit of information on this set on the Lions fan club's website, basically that the cards are given away to fan club members at home games.

1983 NST Album

A company called NST produced four sets of baseball cards between 1975 and 1983.  Well, I say "baseball cards" but technically what they really were were stickers or stamps that were meant to be pasted into albums.  While I had a number of the cards from the first sets, I didn't have any from the last one, nor did I have any of the albums.  Until a little over a month ago.

I picked up a partial 1983 set that was pasted into the album.  I haven't actually counted it up, but I'd estimate I've got about half of the 288 cards.  The album itself is too large to fit in my scanner, so I took a couple pictures:

Front Cover

Back Cover

pp 24-25

The album has 32 pages total.  Despite the album being too big for my scanner, I did some scans to show some of the pages in more detail.

The first bunch of pages has groups of cards for the same players - for example there's eight cards of Tatsunori Hara (cards #19-26), followed by eight cards of Suguru Egawa, five cards of Shoji Sadaoka, etc.  These cards not only show them in uniform, but some show them in street clothes or their high school or college team.

Suguru Egawa (p 5)

Kiyoshi Nakahata (bottom of p. 8)

There's a page for the two foreign players (Reggie Smith and Hector Cruz) as well.  I think that's one of the Lee brothers with Smith on card #81.

Smith & Cruz (p. 10)

There's a page dedicated to the manager and coaching staff - I have the cards for both the manager Motoshi Fujita and head coach Sadaharu Oh but sadly I did not get the card for obscure Hall Of Famer Shigeru Makino (card #198).

Manger & Coaches (top of p. 22)

There's a page for OB Giants - I got the cards for Masaichi Kaneda, Shigeru Takada, Shozo Doi, Roy White, Masahiko Mori and John Sipin but not the ones for Tetsuharu Kawakami, Tatsuro Hirooka, Isao Harimoto or Yukinobu Kuroe.

OB Giants (p. 16)

There's another page with 10 cards for Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh.

ON (p.17)

There's a two page spread (pp. 18-19) dedicated to spring training.  It looks to me like some of these pictures might have been taken in the US - there's a lot of English on the billboards.  The Giants did spring training in Vero Beach in 1981 so these might be pictures from that.  Google didn't have any information on any other times the Giants came to the US but I can't rule out that these might be from Hawaii, Arizona or even Australia.

Spring Training (p. 18)

Spring Training (p. 19)

There was another two page spread (pp. 20-21) that Engel's guide labels as "Players Relaxed".  The first page shows a lot of candids of the players in street clothes while the second page looks like promotions at the ballpark.  Here's the bottom of each page:

Players Relaxed (bottom of p. 20)

Players Relaxed (bottom of p. 21)

There's a page at the end of the album that I think is some sort of redemption page.  It looks like if you got 40 of these little Giants stickers, you could send the page in for some sort of gift.  Sadly, the previous owner only got 38 of them.

Redemption Page (p 32)