2013 BBM The Trade Stories

Christmas came six months early for me yesterday as I got six sets from Japan in the mail.  So I'll be spending a little time getting caught up on some sets released in the last three months.

First up is a set released in mid March called The Trade Stories.  This is a 90 card set that highlights great trades in NBP history.  There are 72 cards of OB players who were traded in what I guess were significant trades in history and 18 cards for current players who are with new teams for 2013.

The 72 cards for OB players each feature one player each.  It's not obvious looking at the cards what the trade was that the player was involved in and who they were traded for.  It looks like the cards are grouped together by trade - for example, card #1 is Masaaki Koyama and card #2 is Kazuhiro Yamauchi.  Those two were traded for each other in the 1963-64 off season (Koyama from the Tigers to the Orions and Yamauchi obviously the other way).  It's not clear though that everyone in the set has someone else in the set that they were traded for.  So while I find the set interesting, it would be more interesting if there was some obvious indication of who was traded for who on the cards.

The set does include some reasonably big names - Shinichi Etoh, Katsuo Ohsugi, Isao Harimoto, Koji Akiyama, Koichi Tabuchi, and Masahiro Doi are all in the set.  I was surprised and disappointed that Hiromitsu Ochiai did not make the set - he was traded from Lotte to Chunichi following the 1986 season for four players.  I also noticed that despite the fact that the trade that sent Koji Akiyama to the Hawks from the Lions for Makoto Sasaki involved six players in total, only Akiyama and Sasaki made the set.

As is typical for an OB set from BBM, the set is heavy with players from the 1970's to 1990's.  The earliest trade is the Koyama-Yamauchi trade from 1963-64, but the next trade included happened in the 1971-72 offseason.  Some of the pictures used were in black and white.

Here's some sample cards of the OB players:

#3

#23

#51

The final 18 cards in the set feature players who were joining new teams for 2013.  This includes three players who returned to Japan from the US - Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Kosuke Fukudome and Takashi Saito.  It also includes the big trade from last January that sent Yoshio Itoi and Tomoya Yagi from the Fighters to the Buffaloes for Hiroshi Kisanuki, Keiji Ohbiki and Shogo Akada.  It does not include any new Westerners to NBP like Andruw Jones or Nyjer Morgan or any Westerners who switched teams in the off season like Tony Blanco.  Here's a couple sample cards:

#76

#90

All the cards can be seen here.