Japanese Baseball Cards: Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels

After years of speculation, intrigue and machinations, Shohei Ohtani has finally signed a contract with an MLB team - the Los Angeles Angels. Not one of my favorite teams but also not one that he'd be dead to me if he joined so I'm good with it (not that my opinion matters).

Typically on a "New Import" post I'd mention the player's rookie cards and what sets he's appeared in. I've beaten the subject of his rookie card to death with a couple posts last year - one that showed a bunch of his 2013 rookie cards and another that painstakingly listed every card I'm aware of that was issued for him in 2013 (including promos). He's appeared in every BBM flagship set (both 1st Version and 2nd Version) since 2013 as well as all the Genesis (2013-17), Classic (2013-16) and Fusion (2016-17) sets. He's been in every BBM team set for the Fighters including both the pack based sets and the various box sets (2013 Young Fighters, 2014 WE LOVE HOKKAIDO, etc) and three "Historic Collection" sets - 2014's Brilliant Teenagers, 2015's Memories Of Uniform and 2016's The Ballpark Stories. He also appeared in BBM's sets for the 80th Anniversary of professional baseball in Japan in 2014 and the company's 25th Anniversary in 2015. He appears in every Calbee set since 2013 as well although he doesn't always have a "regular" card in the set - there's a couple years (2013 & 2017) that he only appears in a subset. He had cards in the Bandai Owners League sets from 2013 to 2015 (their final year). He also appears in a couple of Epoch's sets in the past two years for both the Pacific League and the Fighters themselves. UPDATE - I completely forgot to mention that BBM did a box set last year called "Go Higher" that featured both him and Shintaro Fujinami.

Here's a bunch of his cards, most of which I don't think I've shown before: